Guest rothko Posted April 25, 2005 Report Share Posted April 25, 2005 Thankfully, I have Kanotix or else I wouldn't be able to write this now. I've really messed up an installation of Mandrake 10.1 for a dual boot system. I did all the preparation of backing up files, defragmenting and reducing the single NTFS partition to make room for linux. I inserted the first disk and what surprised me at first was the fact there was no GUI for the installation procedure - even though I've seen screenshots of it. Regardless of this I went ahead with the installation and tried to go through with it without the GUI, which was slightly confusing at times. I installed the packages I'd chosen and went through putting each disk in. When it came to reboot the first thing which terrified me was seeing there was on Windows XP on the boot list - then when I tried to start Mandrake, there it was again, only command line (which I don't know all that much about), no GUI. I've tried 'startx' but that doesn't do anything. It's bad enough having wiped XP off my system - which I assume I have - but not having Mandrake either makes it much worse. Can somebody please help me out of the real mess I've created for myself?Your help and advice would be much appreciated. many thanks in advance, David (Thank God for Kanotix) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Willard1975 Posted April 25, 2005 Report Share Posted April 25, 2005 What are you saying? Did you install MDK on your XP partition or is it just that XP is listed in the boot loader when you start? MDK does not wipe anything from your drive, you do that yourself. It does add an XP entry in your loader so you can boot that after the installation. If you removed that entry during install you can't boot XP, but it's still there. You can however manually add the entry again. Not being able to start X can be a mis-configure during install as well. Did you change anything during install and/or did MDK detect your video card at all? MDK has good hardware support but it doesn't support everything. Sometimes it configures it for you and sometimes it doesn't so you have to do it manually. You might have an odd card or some integrated history that MDK doesn't recognize. When you type 'startx' and it fails you usually get an error message from the x-server. You need that to solve the problem. /Willard. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VeeDubb Posted April 25, 2005 Report Share Posted April 25, 2005 I'm just really confused by the lack of GUI for the install. It is possible to install without the GUI, but I've never seen it come up as the default instalation. Was this the mini-install version or something? Did you enter any unusual commands early in the instalation? As willard said, having XP in the boot loader list is TOTALY normal. If the mandrake isntaller detects a windows partition, it will automaticaly put a windows option in the boot loader. The idea being that it's easier to dual boot that way. Basicaly, my thought is this: I don't know what you installed, but it wasn't the regualr version of mandrake. I know that's not really useful, but it sounds like something went VERY wrong. My only suggestion, is to put the first disk back in, if you're sure it's actualy the full install of mandrake, and install again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rothko Posted April 25, 2005 Report Share Posted April 25, 2005 Hi, Thanks for the responses. Did I install Mandrake on my XP partition? Yes, I think that's probably what I've done - if not I think I may have wiped Windows off there by mistake. Is XP listed in the bootloader when I start? No. I tried installing it again but the same thing happened, there is no GUI as I've seen in the screenshots of MDK installs, just a kind of command line interface, which did go through pretty much the same stages as it does with the normal interface - though when it came to partitioning it was a bit confusing. The first stage with the "press enter to install or upgrade" looked normal, when I pressed enter that's when it changed. Was it the mini-version? I don't know. Did I enter any unusual commands early on? No, I just went along with it. I was up most of the night whilst all this was happening and did an install of Knoppix to hard drive so it's possible to download and burn off another OS; I'm thinking of trying to download MDK again, perhaps another version and try to install that. My hard drive currently looks like this: Partition - Type - Status - Size /dev/hda-1 Free - Hidden - 62.51GB /dav/hda2 Extended- 13.82GB /dev/hda5 Ext3 - 5.85GB /dev/hda6 Linux Swap- 1.07GB /dev/hda7 Ext3 - 6.89GB I've resigned myself to the fact I've lost XP, as I'm pretty sure I have. I know I've most likely seriously scewed this up but I'd appreciate any advice on where to go from here? many thanks, David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
daniewicz Posted April 25, 2005 Report Share Posted April 25, 2005 I would suggest burining new 10.1 iso's and trying again. The full install will be 3 CD's. Let the installation process wipe all of your partitions and get a fresh start.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted April 25, 2005 Report Share Posted April 25, 2005 I would suggest burining new 10.1 iso's and trying again. The full install will be 3 CD's. Let the installation process wipe all of your partitions and get a fresh start.... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Before doing that though... stick the kanotix in and see what partitions you have... if you open a root terminal and use qtparted (or sudo it) you should see all disks /parts... At this stage the less you do the better if you have anything valuable on the XP partition.. just try and see whwat partitions you have and what's on them.... The only thing i can think of with the installer is your graphics card was unsupported. However kanotix obviously found it and it worked...give us some details OR post your device part of /etc/X11/Xorg.conf OR XF86config-4 (depending on version of kanotix) you may need to do a full install later but lets see what happened 1st and if you have valuable data on XP! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest rothko Posted April 25, 2005 Report Share Posted April 25, 2005 Hi, Thanks for the responses. I put the information about the partitions in the post above. hda-1(62.51GB in size), which is where Windows was is "free" but "hidden" according to QTParted, with the remainder (hda2, which is 13.82GB) being devided between /dev/hda5 - ext3 (5.85GB) /dev/hda6 - linux swap (1.07GB) /dev/hda7 - ext3 (6.89GB) hda5 being the / as for the device part of XF86config-4: Section "Device" ### Available Driver options are:- # sw_cursor is needed for some ati and radeon cards #Option "sw_cursor" #Option "hw_cursor" #Option "NoAccel" #Option "ShowCache" #Option "ShadowFB" #Option "UseFBDev" #Option "Rotate" Identifier "Card0" # The following line is auto-generated by KNOPPIX mkxf86config Driver "i810" VendorName "All" BoardName "All" # BusID "PCI:1:0:0" EndSection Is this the right info? Sorry, I'm really new to this. I don't have a dedicated graphics card. I started off running Kanotix from the CD but I've now installed Knoppix so I can download and use the CD-writer to burn off another set of iso's. Have I lost XP for good or is there some way of recovering it? If you need any more info then let me know and I'll post it. I really appreciate you help with this, many thanks. David Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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