At 03:02 PM 7/12/2002 +0100, you wrote: >Could you tell us please, >a) how many hard drive, there size, and what's on them by way of partitions. > so some sort of partition table would be useful.
The box has two hard drives. drive 1: Maxtor 2BO20H1 (running Win XP) - 19+gigs - one partition. drive 2: Maxtor 86480D48 (target for M8 install) - 6+ gigs - see below >b) what partition tools you have besides mandrake cd1, if any. Partition Magic 7.0 - when opened after an attempted M8 install, claims there are some partition size errors that it auto-fixes and then reports that D2 has "error 108" and is "BAD". The HD can't be formatted with PM. >c) I cannot remember which mandrake version, remind me. M8 >d) Is this a single install of mandrake with windblows. or, on it's own. see above >e) Any particular hardware that you think may be difficult, ie some usb > devices can be awkward. Some makes of hard drives too. > we ought to know what mobo,processor,memory, etc you have. MotherBoard is a Holco 694T-686B The processor has 128 SDRAM. There are no USB devices installed at present. I can provide a SiSandra 2002 analysis of just about everything on the machine. I don't know if you've ever seen a SiSandra report but it is so detailed that even after eliminating many of the tests and data regarding stuff you obviously won't need, it comes out at almost 600KB as a TXT file. I could not send it to the list. May I send that report as a private attachment to you or anyone else who want to see it?. >f) You keep mentioning text installs , is your mouse not being recognised ? > if so what make ? The Logitech mouse is being recognized. The reason for the text-install is that it was someone's suggestion, here on the list, as a way of avoiding the crash that occurs during graphic install as soon as the grinning penguins are displayed. A graphic install has never gotten past that point regardless of which of the two usable partitions is tried. The M8 auto-allocate installer creates 3 partitions (/,swap and /home). I also tried it with one large partition plus a swap but that did not work any better. Strangely enough, as reported in sequential detail in an earlier post, one of the many text-intsalls actually worked for three boots before it stopped working. There probably is some significance in the fact that the earlier text installs failed at a cryptic prompt [myusername@localhost myusername]$ that I now think may have been the "auto user / password" that either was hung or running so slow it seemed to be. That suspicion is reinforced by the fact that when the install actually let me in, it did so as I was starting to enter the user name and pw into the prompt not realizing that it was configured, as I now realize it had been during install, for auto open. After that, attempts to reboot into one of the GUIs got no further than that prompt. If I wait five minutes, nothing happens. If I fill in the user/pw, I get that same strange prompt that ends in $. And I have no idea what it wants. Guesses (start, launch, run, etc) do nothing but return the prompt. "exit" take me back to the user/password. Trying to launch into Mandrake from the BootLoader only gets as far as a line that says something about "run level" (which means and wants ???). The BootLoader will let me open XP. But subsequent attempts at text install of M8 no longer work. Now the text install crashes and returns the cryptic series of errors messages about "memory may be missing" and when that error is clicked away, another equally useless message appears wanting me to "f2 to open a monitor" (?) . That's a useless prompt because at that point the machine is so hung that the only way out is to pull the plug from the wall. The KB is frozen and even the on/off doesn't work. The points at which it the text install crashes (I've tried six times) *usually* is immediately after I finish entering the dial up information.But on two occasions it failed sooner. FWIW, the installs all get well into the second disk before failing. That suggest to me that the partitioning is OK. Do you agree? I suspect an incompatibility with something in the box. Also FWIW, D2 formerly held a WIN 98 install (3 partitions each slightly over 2 gigs) that ran for about three years with no problems other than the normally horrible Winstability. I upgraded the box, new power supply, new mobo, more RAM, with the new 19+ gig HD as the primary and the other HD holding data and programs as well. That ran that for about 3 months before I decided to move everything to the primary and install M8 on the smaller drive. My ultimate goal is to reverse that setup with Linux on the primary drive and WIN on the smaller drive running the few WIN progs I must have (mostly FilemakerPro and few others that I'm thinking may not yet have Linux versions) . Any suggestions you or anyone else may have will be appreciated. If you want the text file of the Sisandra report in private email, just ask. Thanks again, Joe
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