lospeed

I am trying to instal MDK PowerPack 10.1 CDs (boxed set) onto a PC (2.4GHz, 512MB RAM) with two hard drives. Windows 98 is on drive hda (40GB) and MDK is to go on hdb (40GB). The installation from CD is failing at the very start. After clicking for the standard installation, I get “Detecting USB devices”, and then “Loading program into memory”. The next thing is “Could not uncompress second stage ramdisk”. I click OK and get “Proceeding, please wait”. Then the PC hangs or goes back to the start. As it is a Powerpack there should be MDK support, so I tried MandrakeExpert - but I have been waiting for a response from them since Saturday and it is now Monday afternoon here. If I click Alt F3 during the problem it says something like end-request: IO-error, dev hdd, sector....... Buffer IO-error or device hdd, logical block 306169 mounting /dev/hdd on /sysroot/tmp/image type iso9660 succeeded isofs found Mandrakelinux CDROM Total memory 512 MB Trying to load sysroot/tmp/image/install/stage2/mkdinst_stage2.b z2" Then it ends with: “kernel panic - fatal exception in interrupt” It is detecting the drives OK and it says it has found the CDROM with MDK disk. My CDROM drive seems to work OK in normal use. Googling for the “uncompress second stage ramdisk” seems to suggest it is usually due to faulty downloads - but this is Powerpack CDs bought in a box. Any help will be welcome! Further information on this one..... Mandrake have since responded and suggested a couple of things. First, check memory using memtest by booting from MDK CD1 and going to F1 - the result was a Pass with no errors. Second, try another CD-RW. So I tried the CD1 in another, similar, Pentium PC (but which has a different make of CD-RW - I think the name is Microstar) and found that it will start the installation OK (I went as far as the step where you choose the language). But the Benq CD-RW on the original PC works OK for installing applications on Windows and burning CDs on Windows. Therefore Mandrake now suggest there is a compatibility problem between MDKlinux and my Benq CD-RW on that PC. They say it doesn’t work with some CD-RWs. So I guess I will have to try connecting up a different CD-RW to the original PC, at least to get the installation done.

Thanks for all the help and Happy New Year!

Yes! After writing that message I went to look into the MCC again and found it was not in the initial list but in the "sublist" under system, just as you say. I unchecked harddrake and re-booted - and the total time to boot has dropped from 5 minutes to about 2.5 minutes. Now most of the lag is at the "Doing alsactl ..." stage. Do I have to re-check harddrake for the software now to run properly? Also, I looked under "hardware" at the sound card settings and the config box said my default is snd-intel8x10. Whe I clicked on "Currently uses.." there was no response even after about 5 minutes. I followed a suggestion there to try /sbin/lsmod and this list showed the snd-intel8x10 as size 30124 and "used by" 1 (with nothing after the 1). I don't know if any of this is a help.

I can't understand how to do this. If I go to MCC there is no section called "services". There is a list, which includes "hardware". If I go to that I get a set of icons, one of which is again "hardware". Clicking this (and waiting about 5 minutes again) brings up a list of my hardware. But nowhere can I find anything that allows me to "disable harddrake". Can you explain a little more, please. Thanks for being tolerant!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}> In my messages above I had given the following: I am using a 2.8 GHz Pentium with 512MB RAM and two 80GB hard disks, Radeon 7000 graphics card. The disk partitioning is as follows. The primary disk has Win98 and MDK 9.2: hda1 windows (55GB), hda5 root (18GB), hda6 swap (580MB) The secondary disk has MDK 10.2: hdb1 root (5.8GB), hdb5 swap (1GB), hdb home (67GB) Please let me know what else you need to know - I'm not very knowledgeable about computers, so not too sure what info is required. It is not a "branded" PC but one built by a small local company.

It was a Powerpack boxed set direct from Mandrake, although I suppose even those disks could have a problem. I will find out tomorrow how to do the mdsum.

I used autoallocate on installing 10.1 and that's how it set up hdb with three partitions, one of them the swap. The 9.2 was already set up with its own swap partition. With so little experience of Linux I didn't want to mess anything up. I will have a look at the othe things you suggest. The reason the sound card is not set up may be to do with the fact that I don't use it - this PC is used for editing documents in my work, so it's rather a quiet machine!. Also, when I installed 10.1 it was a bumpy ride and a number of things didn't work properly. For instance it never offered me the step where you can review your hardware and make changes.

And here is the further information (I am working in Windows and had to switch to MDK to look at files). I can tell you which stage the boot problem occurs. It stops for ages at “Searching for new hardware”. Also for a while at “Doing alsactl to restore mixer settings”. It also takes 5 minutes to get into Control Center and another 5 minutes if I then click, for example, on the Boot section. I am using a 2.8 GHz Pentium with 512MB RAM and two 80GB hard disks, Radeon 7000 graphics card. The disk partitioning is as follows. The primary disk has Win98 and MDK 9.2: hda1 windows (55GB), hda5 root (18GB), hda6 swap (580MB) The secondary disk has MDK 10.2: hdb1 root (5.8GB), hdb5 swap (1GB), hdb home (67GB) It is really strange that MDK 9.2 was so slow before but now is fast since I installed 10.1 - yet the 10.1 itself is even slower than 9.2 was!

Thanks for the quick reply. Here is the contents of the /etc/fstab file. /dev/hdb1 / ext3 defaults 1 1 /dev/hdb6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2 /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0,user,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec,users 0 0 none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,sync,codepage=850 0 0 /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows vfat umask=0,iocharset=iso8859-15,codepage=850 0 0 none /proc proc defaults 0 0 /dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0 /dev/hdb5 swap swap defaults 0 0 There is a file in /home/user called xsessionerrors and has this: startkde: Starting up... QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used ksplash: WARNING: KGenericFactory: instance requested but no instance name passed to the constructor! QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used QPixmap: Cannot create a QPixmap when no GUI is being used kbuildsycoca running... ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header read failed, errno=104 kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header has invalid size (-1) kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header read failed, errno=104 kio (KIOConnection): ERROR: Header has invalid size (-1) kio (KLauncher): ERROR: SlavePool: No communication with slave. kmix: ERROR: Alsa mixer cannot be found. Please check that the soundcard is installed and the soundcard driver is loaded. kmix: kmix: ERROR: Alsa mixer cannot be found. Please check that the soundcard is installed and the soundcard driver is loaded. kmix: X Error: BadWindow (invalid Window parameter) 3 Major opcode: 20 Minor opcode: 0 Resource id: 0x100000a ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe ALSA lib pcm_hw.c:549:(snd_pcm_hw_start) SNDRV_PCM_IOCTL_START failed: Broken pipe klauncher: WARNING: KRun::processDesktopExec: No URLs supplied to single-URL service kwrite %u I will send some more info on my computer and partitions separately. Thanks for the help!

I am a newbie who has MDK 9.2 on a dual partition with Win98 as a way of trying out Linux. Now I have a second hard disk and have installed MDK 10.1 on it, while retaining 9.2 and Win98 on the first disk. The 9.2 worked OK but was always slow to boot and slow to open Control Center (MCC). After a some installation problems I now have 10.1 working but it is extremely slow to boot (5 minutes), slow to open MCC (another 5 min) and slow to open some options in MCC. Also, the bootloader only offered me 10.1 and Win98, no 9.2. I followed advice to go to MCC, bootloader, and add a new entry for my 9.2 on hda5. Now I have all three....but now 9.2 is fast to open and 10.1 is still slow! I wonder if the setup of my bootloader is anything to do with the slowness. When I set the bootloader in MCC to also load 9.2 the entry went in with "image" set as: /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-12mdk. This was all it offered and now 9.2 boots fast compared with its previous slow performance. But when I look at the bootloader setting for my 10.1 the "image" is simply set as: /boot/vmlinuz (although there is the option of the /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-12mdk too). Similarly for the entries under "initrd". I know very liitle about Linux so I am loathe to change the setting for 10.2 to /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-12mdk unless advised to do so. But I understand that 2.6.8.1-12mdk is the kernel in v.10.1, not v.9.2. Has my bootloader got confused somewhere along the line?