PNP OS and XP Home

[Guest Mish]

Well, here is the rundown.

 

Dell Dimension 5100, Intel 3.2Ghz, USB keyboard and Mouse. DVD drive, but no CD.

 

A few problems.

 

Either BiIOS A01, my CMOS, or XP Home does not have an option to have a PNP disabled OS. There is simply no option in BIOS. Is there another way?

 

Secondly, a computer savvy friend installed mandrake on a similar machine and did not have to turn off PNP OS, so I tried that. Firstly the CD Drive could not be detected (sorted after a quick read here) and now the keyboard won't accept any commands, this is directly after the press enter or F1 initial loading screen, when it says "Please choose and installation method" now listing my CD drive as an option. Even though I have OK and Cancel buttons onscreen; [enter],[space]and[o] do nothing, which are the intuitive ways to press buttons in a non-mouse interface.

 

Anyone got any ideas why that might happen?

 

---edit------

 

To give a brief update: I found that I might solve the problem by using a USB -> PS/2 converter for my keyboard. I do indeed have one of those, what I do not have is a PS/2 port at the back of my computer.

Edited September 18, 2005 by Mish

[ianw1974]

During installation, USB devices can be a pain. Is best to use the normal PS2 keyboards etc and then after installation, reboot the machine and plug in the USB ones and you should be fine.

 

Have you checked to see if there is a later BIOS for your machine? Might be worthwhile applying this if there is one.

[Guest Mish]

As I said, there is no way to have a PS/2 keyboard, and I checked, the BIOS is fully up to date, which I guess I expected because it is failry new.

[ianw1974]

Sorry I must have missed that the first time around :P

 

OK, there are a few parameters you can pass and see if it helps. Boot from the CD, and you'll get a prompt to press enter or F1. Press F1.

 

The parameters you can pass are:

 

noapic

nolapic

acpi=off

ide=nodma

 

these can be used in various combinations. First try:

 

linux noapic

 

then try adding other parameters, such as:

 

linux noapic nolapic

 

and add another parameter if that doesn't work. Let us know how you get on.

[Guest Mish]

I tried:

 

linux noapic

linux noapic nolapic

linux noapic nolapic acpi=off

linux noapic nolapic acpi=off ide=nodma

 

The keyboard still did not work for any of them. Since none of the screen is animated, it is just as possible that it has locked up, I suppose, but it seems that USB keyboards are a problem more often that freezing.

 

Thanks for the help so far.

[ianw1974]

Bit of a longshot, but is there anything in the BIOS about legacy USB? Is this enabled or disabled? You could try the opposit to how it's configured now and see if that helps. To be honest, I'm not entirely sure, but that's the only thing I can think of right now that might help.

[Guest Mish]

Sorry, no thing like that or similar.

 

From a little web reading, alot of Dell users are complaining about lack of acces to a non-PNP OS option. I really want to have Linux on my computer, I would be very disappointed if I could not.

 

I have an idea though. I have a very old WIN 98 machine, with a 2Gb hard drive. Do you think it might be possible to install Linux on that, and then transfer the hard drive onto my new machine?

[ianw1974]

You could certainly try it. Linux tends to work when you change all the hardware, unlike Windows :P

 

Another thing, if you can. Download a copy of Knoppix 3.9 CD iso image (can be obtained from distrowatch.com). The latest release is a DVD image, but for testing purposes, scroll down a bit for the 3.9 CD (will be quicker to download too).

 

It's a Live bootable CD, that loads the Linux OS into memory, and you can run it. Run this, and see if you have keyboard and mouse support. If you do, then at least we know that it can be gotten running somehow.

[Guest Mish]

Thanks for the help so far.

 

Well, after 8 hours of typing in code and mounting disks and partitioning manually to try and install Gentoo on my old PC (Why Gentoo? Because it only has one CD and Mandrake has two. So lazy) I had to give up and reformat my HD and install Mandrake, which turns out to be easy to install (Don't have to partition drives, learn code without a manual, find the floppy drive without instructions before the drivers are loaded.)

 

I now have a healthy, happy, 2Gb HD Mandrake Linux PC. I need to install the old HD in the new machine. If you could help with that, I have some info about both PCs.

 

Old HD:

 

during start up the "IDE PRIMARY MASTER" is listed as FUJITSU MPB3021ATU which seems to be this:

 

http://developer.novell.com/yes/38994.htm

 

and the "IDE SECONDARY MASTER" is listed as CRD-8240B which I believe is my CDROM

 

Disk was partitioned by Mandrake Install CD, so don't know what it looks like, but I'm assuming it has three or four areas like normal Linux.

 

Processor could be: Cyrix MII 300 (OLD!)

 

New compy:

 

Dell Dimension 5100 with 3.2Ghz P4 USB mouse/keyboard, DVD/CD drive, XPHome, 145Gb HD, 1Gb DDR2 RAM.

 

Already three partitions on this HB, one for recovery and one for something mysterious but nececary according to Dell. I can defrag and then Fdisk to create a fourth partition, but that is the maximum that you are permitted.

 

Here are some shots of my Compy to help you get around:

 

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/8877/compy0014yn.png

 

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/5366/compy0025qv.png

 

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/1839/compy0030vs.png

 

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/4153/compy0044gd.png

 

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/1065/compy0055pf.png

 

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/5535/compy0068rh.png

 

http://img398.imageshack.us/img398/2313/compy0073dw.png

 

In essence, do you know what has to connect to what?

Should I just plug in and go, or should I do something else?

How do I make a partition on on hard disk write/readable from the other, without letting the other partitions be written to, but allowing them to be read?

How do I make it so that I can boot from either HD?

 

Sorry this is a long post with stuff that you might not know about in it, but you've been really great so far, so I thought I would push my luck and try for the whole thing! Thanks alot for your help so far.

[ianw1974]

Couple of ways to look at it. Eg, if you removed the Dell hard disk, and installed the old one and it was primary ide, then it would just boot.

 

However, the new hdd from the Dell machine wouldn't be in the machine. What's currently on the Dell hard disk that was in the machine already? Is it just Windows XP only in terms of OS (not counting the Dell system partitions). If you can confirm, I can suggest how we go next.

 

When you mention about partitions, four is the maximum of Primary partitions. After that you have to create extended partitions and logical partitions for anything over four primary. At least that's how I think it works :P

[Guest Mish]

Yar, should have said.

 

My new dell has a single XP Home OS, the partitions are just what the machine comes with.

[oldman]

Mish

 

I have found that Mandriva 10.1 is more tolerant of USB devices than 2005LE. I have tried both, installed on an external USB HD. 10.1 works , 2005LE does not.

For 2005LE all I get is a Kernal panic which at this time I don't want to sort out, I'll just use 10.1.

 

My machine is a Dell Dimension 3000, Pentiun 4, 512MB, 80GB IDE hard drive. The hard drive has the normal (for now) 3 partitions installed by Dell.

 

Keep trying,

 

Jim

[ianw1974]

10.1 Official is probably your best bet. Trying to get it working over two different hard disks, and taking into account oldman's prob, you might be better having a go with 10.1 in the Dell, and go from there.

 

Even installing the two and getting both dual booting, you might still end up with the USB problem. Although, try booting with just the old hard disk you've installed on so far, and see if it comes up. If it does, can always look and see if we can get them both working together.

[Guest Mish]

Right, here we go:

 

I have (as mentioned) installed Linux on an old Fujitsu HD which was working fine in the machine that it was origionally installed in.

 

However, in the new machine that I have the hard disk (which is an old PATA interface) will not load even when installed correctly. It seems that linux is having problems mounting the filesystem.

 

LILO is definately correctly installed in the HD. (cam from an off the shelf version on Linux)

[pmpatrick]

First you need a knoppix cd or other live cd that works on your new dell. Here's what's happenning. Linux names hard drives and hard drive partitions based upon where they are on the ide bus. If that changes when moving from box1 to box2, the config files in linux will be completely out of whack with the current environment. You have to manually edit those files which you can do with knoppix. The main file that needs to be edited is /etc/fstab. You will also have to edit /etc/lilo.conf, the config file for the lilo bootloader.

 

Lilo you can handle a couple of ways. It sounds like you are going into your bios and setting the linux drive as your first boot device. That will allow lilo to load. Eventually, you will want to transfer lilo to the dell hard drive mbr and setup a boot selection for winxp. It's not very clear from your post, but it sounds like you are getting lilo to load but that you ultimately get a kernel panic or filesystem mount errors. Both would indicate that fstab is out of whack with the current environment.