danleff

What "4" ways are you speaking about? Please be specific. Let's look at the problem. This will also help me to improve the article for others, as well. Look at this part of the article. If you allow the default layout, then Fedora assumes that the installation is on a single drive in the system. If you feel like troubleshooting, pop in the install disk and get to the partitioning scheme point. Tick the box during this phase and allow Fedora to look at your drive layout. See which drive has XP on it (it will show NTFS as the filesystem on the Windows drive). Stop the installation and report back. I am downloading your users manual as we speak to look at this. If you really choose to install grub on the sda drive (as noted on the summary window) then sda is not your boot drive, or there is a bug in the Grub installer. Installing over and over keeps changing your installation and grub defaults, so I suggest you stop now until we see what is going on. We probably can correct the problem. Can you post which drive is on which sata connector on the motherboard? Also, look in the bios and see which drive is the boot drive. Please be specific. P.S. OK, you have 2 sata connectors and possibly (optional) two sata raid connectors. Which drive is on sata 1 and which on sata 2 (not raid if you have thiese connectors)? In the bios, under the boot menu. Which drive is set as the boot drive? If you already know this, excuse my detail. I just want to see what you have exactly.

Yes, it is included. See this review. OpenOfice is a great application. It also comes in a Windows version. I just used it to make a PowerPoint presentation (in Fedora, of course) that I have to give next week. I also easily updated some graphics for another presentation that is given to new staff. It was easier to do this in OpenOffice (OO) than Powerpoint at work. All done in OO off of scanned hard copies of forms imported into the presentation...and using an HP multifunction printer/scanner and fax to scan the documents. BTW, I have to ask. Is your username reflective of your profession? If so, you are in good company. [Edited by danleff on 2006-08-07 11:19:34]

The article is coming along. The link to the total article is here. The link to the correct installation with the advanced bootloader options is here. The link to recovering the current installation (I hope) is located here.

This confirms something to add to the article that I just wrote. You did not install the bootloader to the MBR of the boot sda drive. If you were able to look at the drives in Fedora, you would see that you installed grub to the /boot directory on the second sata drive, but not the actual bootloader to the MBR of sda. This occurs when you accept the default values during the installation. You must go into the advanced section of the Grub screen, during the installation, and change the order of the drives there. See the page on my article, located here. So, the Windows bootloader is still on the boot sata drive, grub is on the second sata drive, including the bootloader itself. I will add this information to my article.

It's time for me to finish my article on these USB devices! Maybe a general article on wireless to? Wait, I already have some!!! Anyway, the card works in Windows, becaue you used the Windows CD to install the drivers, correct? Same with Linux. This device will not work "out of the box" with wireless. You need drivers to get it to work. Look at the back of the card (device), or the retail box ID marker and post the revision number that is listed there. This will tell us what chipset drives this device. What other networking commands are you referring to? ifconfig needs to be run as root user in a terminal window. once there, type; su (enter the password for your root account when prompted) The correct command syntax for ifconfig in Fedora is; /sbin/ifconfig But, the wireless card won't be listed there until you install the drivers and configure the card.

Did you try the modprobe command as root user? If so and you still get the modprobe error, you have extra ndiswrapper modules on your system. Take a look at this fine article. Follow those directions and see what happens. The important thing is to get rid of any extra modules that may be resident in the kernel source package, using the ones installed by the ndiswrapper package installed. Pay special attention to the directions about removing the old modules first. Item #8 under "Preparing for Installation." Then follow the directions for installing ndiswrapper fresh. Get to the ndiswrapper directory with the unzipped files. Do; make clean make make install Then to the ndiswrapper -i command on your drivers. Check that the drivers are detected correctly with the ndiswrapper -l command. Then I would do the following (still as root user) depmod -a modprobe ndiswrapper See if that works. Then follow the rest of the directions in the article for "Yast Configuration".

It's possible. Try cleaning the surface carefully. Other problems like this can happen because of faulty memory. You also added a new hard drive to the system. Make sure that all your connections are secure and that you did not partially dislodge the connection on the primary sata drive. You also have no partitions on the second drive? If so, partition the drive as a data drive, then try again. A weak or inadequate power supply can also do this. This should not be the case, unless this system is a pre-configured one with a cheapo power supply. Check the bios and see if the drive is seen there. As a last resort, try taking out the new drive, then reinstall Windows. If this works, then you either have a funky new drive, it gave you problems because it was not formatted (of course, if you formatted it and the problem went away, disregard), or your power supply is not adequate. The last point could be related to a lot of peripherals that are on this system that are causing a problem.

To answer your question about the other cards; The D-link DFE-538TX is a realtek RTL8139 chipset and should work. Note that it is shown on the Ubuntu Wiki card matrix as supported. What is the full model number of the other card? usually it's somethng like DFE-520TX....I can't seem to find it. Are you in the USA? Some of these cards are only supported outside the US. I looked on the D-link USA site for the 520.

Sorry for the typo, which mucked up my question. What make and model card do you currently have? What methods have you tried to connect to the internet? When you say that the card is not detected, how do you know? Again, look at the Ubuntu Wiki to see how to set up an internet conenction, depending on your type of connection. Knowing what you have already tried to connect will help. If you are new to Ubuntu, then realize that you need to configure Ubuntu for your type of internet connection. For example, you probably set up your XP connection with the provider's CD. Since this does not work in Linux, you have to set it up manually and tell Linux what you have. If you connect to your provider via dynamic DHCP, then this is quite easy. If you provider uses a static IP address to allow you to connect, then you need some more information from your provider, or get it from Windows XP. If you are an experienced user, then disregard what I have said. If you move to a new card, you would still have to follow the same steps. If you get to a terminal command line, as root user, then try typing in the command lspci -v. If the card is seen, then you will see some identification of the card in the output. If you type in at the command line ifconfig and do not see a set of information for eth0, then you need to configure the connection for either DHCP (dynamic ip address) or static.

I've been reading up on SuSE and ndiswrapper, based on another thread. The article that you referenced is very good. Anyway, did you.... 1. Install the kernel source package BEFORE installing the ndiswrapper package? 2. Remove the old ndiswrapper modules that come with SuSE, as outlined in the article, before installing the new package? Quote: and read nearly every thread about ndiswrapper installed and reinstalled ndiswrapper numerous times, tried different commands that ppl posted and different techniques This is generally a mistake, as it can muck up the works. Stick with one plan, such as the article that you referenced. When you say that you installed and reinstalled several times, did you do make clean then make install on each attempt, or did you just try make install. make clean clears out the old files and starts over. You got no compile errors during the installation? Quote: modprobe ndiswrapper <nothing> Your good til this point. When you just get a return to the command prompt, without any error messages, this means the module loaded. However, dmesg seems to indicate to me that something is wrong. It may be that you forgot to remove the old ndiswrapper drivers that came with SuSE, or that the kernel source is not installed?

It just occured to me, are you using the version of ndiswrapper that came with SuSE, or did you install from a newer package that you downloaded?

Before you move to a new card, hyave you tried to connect usng this card? How? This is an onboard card, or PCI card? There are good guides at the Ubuntu Wiki that may help. Do you have a broadband connection, or DSL?

OK, then grub has installed itself on the primary master (hda) drive and not the sata drive. So, the Windows bootloader is intact on the sata drive. When you try to boot from the ide drive, XP is not found, because you changed the logical order of the drives at boot. Grub, therefore, is looking for the Windows boot.ini file in the incorrect place, based on the boot order when Fedora was installed. This is fixable. But it is advisable to reinstall correctly, to boot from the sata drive. To do so, you must change the drive order of grub, during the installation. this is the easiest way to do it, without a hassle. Let me work on my article and see if I can get it up soon, to describe how to do this. If you want to keep the ide drive as the boot drive, let me know, but expect to learn how to do so!

Ok, let's look at what you have. The motherboard has the following hard drive connectors; Primary IDE The hard drive is properly jumpered for primary master and attached to the outermost connector, at the end of the ribbon cable? Secondary IDE sata1 connector sata2 connector Where is the sata drive connected to, sata 1 or 2? Fedora defaults installing to the primary master drive (usually), unless you tell it otherwise. You need to watch the message screen (at the bootloader options menu, during the installation) to see where grub is being defaulted to. The default OS to boot depends on what OS you ticked during the Grub install screen, Fedora or Windows. Quote: On both of those set ups when i hit a key to select lets say on my second install i tried, it would boot into xp no problem if left to count down, when I selected fedora, i get a screen with the chain loader info but then it would always just freeze and not do anything, the same is true with the first install which did the same thing, only diff there was the default boot os, was fedora. Unless you actually highlight a grub entry at the boot screen and hit the enter key, the default OS always boots. You should never get a chainloader message when booting Fedora, in a default installation of Fedora. This message usually occurs when the XP installation reference is incorrect and the text displays and hangs when grub can't find the boot.ini file for Windows. If you were able to look at the grub.conf file, you would see that it uses the chainloader option, not under the Fedora boot references. Of course, I have seen one other Linux OS do this if it detects anther OS on the system, even if it was a Linux installation. This leads me to believe one of two things, based on your quote that I referenced above. 1. At some point, the bios boot order was changed before installing Fedora. 2. During one of your attempted installations, you did get into the advanced bootloader options, but set the first hard drive detection order incorrectly. 3. You have changed the boot order in the bios at some point in an attempt to get both operating systems to boot. 4. On one of your "default" installations, you left the sata drive (sda) box ticked (did not untick the sata drive) when asked to delete any linux partitions and use that drive as part of the Fedora installation process. I'm not sure what effect this would have, but one guess would be that Fedora installed a /boot partition on the sata drive, which would explain why you are getting a chainloader message, or failed to boot into Fedora. If this were the case, since you had two installations of Fedora, it's possible that you have two /boot partitions, one on the sata drive and one on the second IDE drive. therefore, the partitions are mucked up. But, as it stands now, does either OS boot up when you highlight and actually select (hit the enter key) to choose that OS to boot?

The most likely problem, assuming that the hard drive is not at fault (as it would seem is not the case), is to format the drive with one of the manufacturer's utilities to prepare it for XP (prepare it as a boot drive). For example, Maxtor has it's Maxblast software utility and Seagate's DiskWizard. Use the utility designed to work for your hard drive make. The Windows installer probably will not delete the Linux partition and confuse the Windows installer. Also, see this Microsoft article on the subject.

One question, please. How did you format or prepare your hard drives before you tried this?

I have a very long winded explanation for this. Believe me, I have multiple drives on my system, three IDE drives and 2 sata drives and still don't know how I did it. Can you post the make and model of your motherboard, so I can look at the users manual? Then the long winded description...and hopefully I can really finish my article on this and get the final version on my website!

The errors that you got on the disks were most likely due to bad burns to the disks. When you burn iso disks, they must be burned at a slow speed, not the fastest speed rated by your burner. Burn them at no more than 8X speed. Also make sure that you burn then as images, not data disks. make sure that you verify the disks before installing, or at the beginning of the installation, when Fedora offers to verify the disks for you. It takes time, but prevents problems and tells you if you have good burns. See my article on the subject here.

You need to do all the commands, as root user. Once at a terminal windows, type; su (hit the enter key) When prompted, input the roor user password that you configured when you installed SuSE, enter key. Then try the commands.

Save yourself a lot of headaches. Either get an inexpensive LAN card (D-link or Linksys, or use your onboard LAN port, if you have one. Connect to the router/modem through a CAT5 cable, not USB. Slackware will see it right off. Cost - $10-15 USD headaches - none

Your description of the driver file answered the question abour your chipset, Broadcom. Did you place both the bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys files in the same directory and then try to install them with the ndiswrapper -i command; ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf The name is case sensitive, so if there are any caps in the inf file name, then you need to be case sensitive with the file name. Both the files need to be there. Then if you did the ndiswrapper -l command, you should have seen somethng like; Installed ndis drivers: bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present Both the driver present and hardware present message should be there. If not, they are not installed properly. If the message is there correctly, then; modprobe ndiswrapper If the command line returns with no errors, then the module loaded. Then, to check and see if the card driver is really working; iwconfig Which should show a wlan0 entry with a few lines of code. Do you get this?

OK, then you have three options. This is why I always harp on having a plan when you install an OS and a bootloader. 1. Find the Windows XP disk and do the suggested commands in recovery console to over-write your MBR. 2. Try the fdisk /mbr command using a Windows 98 or DOS 6.22 floppy disk. 3. Leave the system alone and play with Linux as you wish. If you truely are having problems with your hardware with Fedora Core 3, then you may want to try Fedora Core 5. If you choose option #3, you may change your mind about Linux. What has been missing on this thread, is what your hardware is on the system, or what problems you were having with the hardware. It may be just a matter of your hardware being new enough that support for your devices was not present until a more recent version of Fedora. In any case, before you do anything, have a backup of your inmportant files. This is always prudent. To respond again about the uninstalling grub question, see this Grub FAQ page, item #12, to point out the issue with uninstalling bootloaders.

Quote: I am using Fedora 3. When I do uname -a this is part of what i get: x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux This information shows a Fedora version for an Athlon 64 system. Is this what your motherboard is? If so, then I suggest using Fedora Core 5, if you can, as support for the athlon 64 system is much better and it is easier to set things up. If not, then it looks like you may have downloaded or installed the wrong version of Fedora for your system. You may have already figured this out, but what information that you specifically need with the uname -a command is the kernel version for your system. For example, in my Fedora Core 5 system; 2.6.16-1.2080_FC5 This will determine what the exact kernel is and what kernel version from the Linuxant site to download. However, the kernels offered are not the athlon 64 version, but for non-athlon 64 systems. I have no idea if they will work, if you system is an athlon 64 system. Fedora Core 3 uses a different package for installing the kernel source than Fedora Core 5, which is why I asked which version of Fedora that you are using. Let's see if you have an Athlon 64 system before we go on with this. Quote: did installed the drivers on the CD because on the wiki it seems they are the netgear windows drivers, if i need to download those on the wiki anyways, please let me know. The wiki notes what versions of the drivers are known to work. Often the ones on the driver CD do not work, as they are older versions. But, sometimes that do! It is best, however, to use the ones that are recommended and have been tested with ndiswrapper. In any case, the XP drivers usually are the ones that work. Quote: on the iwlist it doesn list wlan0. it lists lo, eth0 and sit0 but no wlan0. Than the drivers are not loading correctly. You need to do the iwconfig command after running the /sbin/modprobe ndiswrapper command. Does it come up now? Quote: for the freezing i had to restart the computer without the netgear usb, which sometimes still causes freezing after i plug it in. This is most likely do to the kernel 4 stack limit issue. Did you happen to do the ndiswrapper -m command to load the drivers at start-up? If so, and you have the stack issue, then ths often is what causess the freezing problem, as ndiswrapper is attempting to load at start-up.

This post is directly related to the other thread that you posted. Please stick to that thread, so the flow of information can be accurate. I will respond directly to your other thread, as the related information that you gave there raised a few questions. Link to other thread

First, have you been able to determine the chipset used on this card? This would be critical to determine what the isue might be. Take a look at this Puppy Linux thread, see the second post on the thread. Use this to determine the chipset information for your card, if you don't know it. If you do know the chipset, let's move on. Let us know what the chipset is on your specific card. These are not well documented. Quote: The drivers installed perfectly, but I set up my card about three or four different ways and restarted countless times and still no avail. Not even the power light on the card comes on. Great, the drivers installed. What did you do from this point to try and get the card to light up? Did you follow the instructions on the ndiswrapper wiki? Often the drivers that come on the driver CD disk do not work. What specific Windows drivers did you use? The Windows XP drivers? When you stated that you tried to set it up four different ways, what do you mean? Can you be more specific?