no21 Posted March 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2004 I guess I should give more information first.... ...I installed my slave drive today, and it has one partition on it for Windows, and that partition is full of crap. I'm assuming I need to format it to wipe it clean before attempting to install Linux on it. Is this true? (Sorry for sounding like such a newbie.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cilar Posted March 20, 2004 Report Share Posted March 20, 2004 you can format it during installation. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
no21 Posted March 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2004 (edited) Ok, I think I've got Mandrake 10 installed on my slave drive now. However, now I'm not sure how to get my PC to boot to Linux. Surely I don't have to go into the BIOS and change the boot sequence each time I want to run Windows or Linux, do I? Hmm...wait a minute. In my installation notes I took during the installation process, it shows that I set the bootloader to 'hdb'. Is this part of the problem? I guess what I'm saying is that now that I have two OS's on my computer, I have no idea how to set up my PC to allow me to choose which one I want to run when I turn on my computer. My PC does allow me to hit F12 during re-boot to go to a 'Boot Menu', but there are only three options: diskette, CD-ROM, Hard drive (C:). My slave drive isn't even an option. Any help anyone can provide is greatly appreciated. Thanks. (Again, thanks for your patience with my 'noob'-ness.) Edited March 20, 2004 by no21 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cilar Posted March 20, 2004 Report Share Posted March 20, 2004 (edited) No you don't have to go into the BIOS to choose which OS you want to boot into. The bootloader (Lilo by default) should be in the hda mbr so that you can choose if you want to boot into Linux or Windows everytime you start up your computer. http://linux.unige.ch/install/mandrake/9.0...ges/reco57.html Edited March 20, 2004 by Cilar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
no21 Posted March 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2004 So I messed up by specifying to put the bootloader on 'hdb', when I should have left it at 'hda' right? If that's the case, then how do I change that option back to 'hda' so I can access Lilo when I reboot? Surely I don't have to reinstall??? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cilar Posted March 20, 2004 Report Share Posted March 20, 2004 (edited) So I messed up by specifying to put the bootloader on 'hdb', when I should have left it at 'hda' right? Yes. After the bios initialization, computer looks at the hda mbr if there is data. If that's the case, then how do I change that option back to 'hda' so I can access Lilo when I reboot If you launch again the installation, can't you directly select the Lilo option ? without reinstalling the rpm files (as far as I recall, one could choose that with Mandrake 9. I don't know if it's still possible with Mandrake 10 though). Another thing you can do is go into the BIOS and ask the computer to boot with the second disk first (hdb). There must be a lot of other solutions to directly put Lilo on the hda mbr but I'm also a newbee lol :) Edited March 20, 2004 by Cilar Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
no21 Posted March 20, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 20, 2004 (edited) Ya, I tried to go into BIOS to tell my machine to boot to the slave drive, but for some reason it won't list any more boot options than diskette, CD-ROM, and the 'c' drive. I guess I'll try booting up with the 1st installation disk to see if I can fix the problem I stated earlier. (I was just so paranoid of doing anything to 'hda' during installation that I set the bootloarder to 'hdb'.) ======= Ok, I just tried booting with the first installation disk, and I typed 'rescue'. I tried the 're-install bootloader' option, and it appeared to successfully do whatever it tried to do, but when I rebooted it booted back into windows insted of Lilo. I'm assuming it just reinstalled the bootloader back onto 'hdb' just like it did during main installation. I also tried going to 'console' during the rescue session, but I had no clue what to do once I was in there. I was able to do simple commands I know like 'ls' and 'ps' etc, etc, to see that I was somewhat functional. At this point I'm thinking I could have re-installed by now and just chosen 'hda' for where to install the bootloader (like I should have, right?). Any other suggestions out there? Edited March 20, 2004 by no21 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted March 20, 2004 Report Share Posted March 20, 2004 Ok, I just tried booting with the first installation disk, and I typed 'rescue'. I tried the 're-install bootloader' option, and it appeared to successfully do whatever it tried to do, but when I rebooted it booted back into windows insted of Lilo. I'm assuming it just reinstalled the bootloader back onto 'hdb' just like it did during main installation. exactly. As long as /etc/lilo.conf is found that's what'll be used and it currently is set to hdb. You could try resue mode>mount your partitions under /mnt>Go to console>then do the command chroot /mnt You're now in mandrake. Now do lilo -v /dev/hda any errors? What? post them, or reinstall. Sometimes reinstalling is the fastest and easiest thing to do. No errors? Reboot. See lilo? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
no21 Posted March 21, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 21, 2004 Well, this is interesting. I RE-installed, and I never re-encountered the screen where I can set where Lilo is put, but apparently it was put in the right place because I now get Lilo when I reboot. When I chose Linux this time, I didn't get all that configuration stuff such as desktop theme, etc. It just hangs there with a blue screen and an 'X' for a mouse pointer. The only way to get out of the 'hang' is to reboot. (The mouse is working though...I can move the 'X' around.) Other tidbits: When the system is booting up, my printer (HP 952C) attempts to print something, but must hit an error because the error light flashed on the printer, and the paper doesn't come out. After hitting the paper feed the sheet of paper comes out with a single character at the top left. (The test page printed just fine during installation.) Also, I got these error messages during installation. They were: xscreensaver-4.14-4mdk.i586 did not load correctly. xpdf-3.00-5mdk.i586 did not load correctly. (I checked all the ISO's with MD5's, and everything was OK.) I'm at a loss now. Anyone with some help? (Thanks for all the help so far.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
no21 Posted March 21, 2004 Author Report Share Posted March 21, 2004 Yet another update.... I just let my PC sit for a while until I decided to reboot one more time, and this time I was asked all those survey questions and what desktop I wanted to use, etc. Then it showed that KDE 3.2 was loading up, and it went through all those icons until it was 85% done and it just stopped on that last icon. It looks like a big 'K' with a sun behind it. The sun is flashing. Then I notice that there is actually an error message behind the KDE startup logo. The message says, "During previous startup, Knotify crashed while instantiating Knotify. Do you want to try again or disable aRts sound output." If I click "Try Again" the system just hangs. If I click "Disable" the system just hangs. Suggestions? What is "Knotify?" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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