danleff

Sorry I could not help. I thought that i tried to address all your points, including the potential reasons why you are facing troubles reinstalling Windows and the hardware issues that you are facing. One of the tough problems in answering questions or responding to problems is piecing together all the issues. Folks who answer posts don't necessarily answer all questions, or know all the answers. The important thing is to make the user think what might be the variables affecting the problem, so he/she can find a solution themselves by thinking more about the situation. No one is ever 100% correct in their points and often one misses all the pertinent bits of information until you read the thread over again (somethimes several times) to narrow down the issue. Unfortunately, it sounds like you are giving up on the forum and moving on. If not, post back and let us know what the solution is that you find. Good luck to you, as well!

Ok, then this is as far as I can take this thread without you telling us how exactly you are connected to the Internet. Understand that we can't speculate what is wrong without knowing your exact situtation. The article I referenced covers most of the bases for the various situations and using Debian to connect at home, work or on a private network. If you are connecting to a network from work, or say from a dorm room or appartment complex which has a building/system wide Internet connection using a fixed ISP address, then perhaps you should consult the IT/LAN administrator to discuss how to connect and if using other than a supported OS setup works. I can only speculate on your situation, but this just results in too little information and wasted posts on both ends. Either way, let us know what progess that you make.

Take a look at this Microsoft Article about the usage of the fdisk /mbr command. By using this command you overwrite the MBR. So, the result is that it removes the Grub MBR data, replacing it with the NT data. From the article; Quote: In Microsoft Windows NT, using the MS-DOS FDISK /MBR command is not always appropriate when you cannot boot a computer. The problem is that the command rewrites the master boot record (MBR) only, and not the entire boot record. The FDISK /MBR command rewrites only the first 446 bytes of the master boot record, not the partition table. Windows NT disk signatures used for fault tolerance are also overwritten, and if the drive contained an FT member, it may not be recognized by Windows NT as an FT member afterward. Keep reading. If you have a steath virus that affected to boot sector and/or MBR this is what you may be experiencing. But it also explains the point of what fdisk /mbr does. Yes, doing the fdisk /mbr command overwrites the MBR with the Windows NT bootloader information. Restoring Grub will recover the grub bootloader information to the MBR, over-writing the NT information, NOT the boot.ini file, which Grub invokes when you choose the option to boot Windows from the grub boot screen. The point being, if you have corrupted partitions, then this can explain why the XP install CD is hanging. If you know how to use the advanced installation options, yes, you can change the formatting of the drive. You can also do this from within Windows system tools. However, if you have disk partition corruption... Also, reference this Microsoft article on formatting the drive for installation, under the How to partition and format your hard disk by using the Windows XP Setup program section, point number 7. If you have a totally blank hard drive, which is unpartitioned (brand new) Windows can have trouble with this on a normal installation. But, general windows installation failures usually mean either; 1. The drive can't be read and pre-formatting the drive will solve the issue, with a tool like the Seagate one. 2. There is a hardware issue that prevents Windows from continuing. this could be a mis-seated video card, one that is not supported, or other hardware related issue. A good example is a USB keyboard that the bios does not sense correctly. 3. A virus that has corrupted the drive, or an unreadable partition structure. Earlier versions of Fedora had issues with installing on systems with a primary NTFS filesystem on the drive, where Windows was previously installed, using an NTFS structure. Also, if you elected to do a default Fedora Core 4 or 5 installation, then I wonder if Logical Volume Management partitions are mucking up the structure, as well. If Windows keeps "misbehaving" I would look deeper into the possibility of a virus problem, or use a tool like PartitionMagic to look at your partition structure. If PM loads and gives warning messages about partition structure problems (offering to correct them), then suspect partition corruption and or a related virus issue.

I am just downloading SuSE 10.1 DVD, so I can look at this further. When you are at the login window menu screen (to input your username and password), click on the "session" menu and see of KDE is one of the options. If so, choose KDE as the desktop for this boot. If it is not a choice, then you will most likely need to install it.

These USB devices can br tricky under Linux, as they generally are made for Windows systems and have windows drivers available only on the manufacturer's website. However, Ubuntu seems to have some native support for some of these devices. If you go to System-->Administration-->Networking, Is the device listed under a wireless category, with atho as it's given name? If so, then try to configure the device. Get into Properties and set the essid to default, set the device to active and see if the card comes up. I don't know how your complex is set up for wireless, but i assume that you have wireless points in the building and by "default", you mean this is the essid name that you use to link to the point? You may also have to set the card to auto DHCP (check the box in the configuration window) to connect to the point on boot. You may need to reboot for this to take effect, I don't know. See if you get a connection in Firefox. If not report back and we can try to troubleshoot further.

I have been reluctant to switch to WPA. Once you get the system up with WEP....My wife will kill me if I mess with her internet connection again! I remember reading that WPA2 is supported. However, this was an article with SuSE running KDE and using the Knetwork Maanger. The option was there in the wireless section for either straight WPA or WPA2. I assume that both the router and the specific NIC on your system support this natively (without any supplemental updates)? Do the InellPRO/wireless 2200bg drivers support this? Anyone out there done this?

Good for you! I have to try one more step in the process, as I think I have it solved, as well. Thanks, james419. I think you hit the nail on the head!

OK, let's go one by one. Quote: I have an ide hard drive, and two fat partitions and a few ext3 partitions. Windows always wants to be first on a hard drive. when you say fat partitions, what do you exactly mean, fat16, fat32, or was Windows installed on NTFS, which is usually by default? Quote: I then used fdisk /mbr from command prompt, and got rid of Grub from MBR. This only removes grub from the MBR and attempts, it does not alter the partition structure. A little while back, a reader was perplexed by my response that this method was not the best way to recover the Windows MBR. This is the exact reason why I said that. It does not always work. If you must recover the windows MBR on an XP system, it is best to do this from the Windows XP installation disk, in recovery mode. Quote: Then i used fdisk and removed the fat partitions, Still No go The windows installation disk can't read linux partitions, or blank space on a drive. The drive must have a fat32 or NTFS filesystem, ideally, on the first primary partition on the system. Complex or mixed partition types on the drive confuse the Windows installer. Quote: Actually windows xp cd would actually boot only once i have DEBUGGED my hard drive or i have used segate's partition manager to delete the entire disk. Actually, what you probably did was delete all the partitions and picked the option to format the disk to prepare for a Windows installation. That's why this works. The utility prepares the drive with a primary partition at the beginning of the drive that the Windows installer likes. But your right, you lose all your data using this method. Quote: IRONICALLY, WINDOWS 98 would boot and install without any issues. This is why you need to be clear about the exact partition structure on the drive. Windows XP only likes to see fat32 partitions, or NTFS ones. It does not like fat16. So, if you used a windows 98 boot disk to format the drive, you must take care. This is assuming that you did this once, from the same disk that you did the fdisk /mbr trick. Windows XP wants it's default partition (fat32 or NTFS) and windows 98 accepts fat16, it's default partition style.

I'll give you my take on the subject and probably take some heat for it. When using Linux, you have to stop thinkling about Microsoft compatibility and think Linux compatibility. This will save you a lot of headaches. Don't think about Microsoft compatibility when it comes to software either. While folks have been able to get some Microsoft applications to run in Linux, this is not ideal. Think in terms of Linux alternatives. There are a bunch of packages (applications) out there for Linux that do the same tasks as Microsoft software. OpenOffice is a good axample of such an alternative to MS Office. You can still use OpenOffice to view and manipulate your Word and Excel files, while still keeping them instact to open and modify on MS Office. In terms of hardware, if your system was made to run with Windows, then you can expect some snags. To give an example, Dell and Gateway systems have a lot of legacy hardware on their Microsoft designed systems. So hardware like "winmodems" which are specifically designed for Microsoft compatibility, may give you fits. It's best to tell us exactly what system you have right now, so we can tell you what problems you may run into, if any. I believe Fedora Core 5 has come a long way to be more user friendly. However, there are many more distros (Linux flavors) out there that have also come a long way in this regard. The best suggestion, is to post what you intend to do with your system exactly, so folks can give their personal experiences. I recently installed Ubuntu and was also quite impressed with it. SuSE also seems to be a great choice. But, it depends on what exactly you want to do with the system. Live CD versions of Linux can also be a good starting point. This way you can try the distro and see if you like it, get comfotable with Linux in general, then decide to install it later on. Mepis and Knoppix are good examples. So, what hardware do you currently have?

If you have a fixed IP address (static), then of course, you have to tell Debian what the values are. From the article How To Set Up A Linux Network, read the following information from the "At Home" portion of the document; Quote: On Windows PCs, go to Start/Settings/Control Panels/Networking and get into the TCP/IP properties for the NIC where you can enter an IP address for the PC, a subnet mask, and possibly a default gateway (if you have a broadband Internet connection). When you enter an IP address into the TCP/IP properties like this it's called a "static" IP address because it won't change unless you change it. Then you can go to the Debian network utility and add the values, configuring the network as a static connection. Quote: No dsl.. fiber all the way to my socket.. I'm not sure what you mean by this, but either you have DSL (where the ethernet cable runs from the system to a DSL modem), or if via broadband, the CAT5 cable runs to the modem, which is connected to your broadband cable.

Get into Yast and have the system configure the sound card. See if this works. I'm rusty on this, but start-->System--> Yast? I have not used SuSE for a while, so the memory fades. I can think of a couple of other possible problems. this system only has the PCI soundcard on it and no onboard sound? What is the make and model of the sound card?

Quote: I wouldn't normally install Fordora without windows drive but the windows drive was in another computer at the time. OK, now more information comes out. The XP drive was installed on another system, correct? Then you moved it to the current Fedora system. Previously, you noted; Quote: i currently have FC5 installed on my second harddrive(slave) and windows XP installed on my first harddrive. The BIOS is currently set boot from the second drive. I need help to add Windows XP to the grub bootloader on the second drive because the XP drive was disconnected during the FC5 installation. I want to leave my nt boot loader intect. This led me to believe that you disonnected the XP drive from this system and installed Fedora. Fedora has always been jumpered as the primary slave drive on this system, correct? So, now the XP drive is primary master, and the Fedora is primary slave. You can do either of what you suggested. Add an entry for Fedora in the Windows boot.ini after copying the first 512 kb of data from the Fedora drive to the XP drive, as a file reference to the boot.ini. This assumes that you are comfortable with command line usage in Linux and can do the steps necessary. This way, the XP drive is the boot drive and the "NT" bootloader is intact. The other option is to keep the second (Fedora} drive as the boot drive in the bios and "fake" grub to reverse the drive designations and XP will boot properly. The latter option also requires that you also make a change to Fedora's /boot/grub/device.lst file, so that it knows that the drive is there and can be referenced in Grub. There is a possible third option. You can pop in the first installation disk of Fedora, get into rescue mode and "recheck" grub, so that it sees the windows drive and hopefully picks up the XP installation, Making a grub entry to boot Windows. The last option is to get a boot manager that will see both installations. I think you were referring to this. This option also assumes that the drives are in the correct order on the system. I never needed one myself, so I can't comment totally from experience. Which is your pleasure? Also realize, that XP can be a problem when putting a hard drive from one system to another. On most XP installations, XP will not boot if it senses a significant change in system hardware. This is by design. Legal copies of XP do this, as you have only a license for XP on one system. I had this happen to me when I added a hard drive to my system. A real pain in the neck! I assume that XP is booting OK now if the bios order is changed to make it the primary drive to be booted?

Quote: I connect directly to the net via rj45. No DLS or similar.. Just standard ethernet.. Well, DSL connects via ethernet, as well. So, you are connected to broadband via ethernet (the connection is always active)? The problem is one of two possible issues. 1. The incorrect module is loaded for the card, which is possible. 2. The system is not set up for auto DHCP. If you are running the Gnome display manager, go to; System-->Aministration-->Networking. Does this show the card to be active? Click on the ethernet connection that shows, then "edit" to edit the connection. Click on the box to check of DHCP. Finish the process and see if you get an IP address. If not, try typing into a root console' ifup eth0 Then see if it works. if not reboot the system and see if it comes up at boot.

Quote: Am I chasing my tail here issuing a command that "downloads" the proper package when I in fact don't even have access to the internet yet? Well, I did not know that you did not have access to the internet. Most folks configure there wired connection first, then set up wireless. I did not clearly see this from your first post. OK, now we know that you have Fedora Core 5. There are specific packages for FC5. Let me see if I can look this up. Bear with me, as there have been a lot of posts recently.

Please look at the other thread that you posted on about the same issue for a response. Try and keep your problem posted under one thread, so that you don't get multiple folks responding and potentially asking the same questions, or giving the same answers. If you decide to respond on this thread, post the information asked for. Then zenarcher, or anybody else can answer your questions more completely, with all information at hand.

Sound drivers are already installed in a default installation of SuSE. When you did the installation, did you make sure that the sound was configured during the installation process? There should have been a summary window that listed your hardware (video, sound etc..) and told you if sound was configured or not. It may be that sound is just muted. Did you check the sound mixer and see if sound is turned up? By just telling us that you need sound driver, we know nothing about your system. If in fact sound is not working because of a driver issue, then we really need to know what soundcard is in your system. Is this onboard sound, or are you using a PCI soundcard? If you don't know, please post the make and exact model of your system. I also just noticed that you posted the same question on another thread. Pick one thread and go with that we can keep all your relevent information under one thread.

Excuse my frustration with this response, but I have answered this question multiple times on many threads. I really have to compile an article about this and use it for reference. 1. There is no need to disconnect the XP drive before installing Fedora. By doing this, you have allowed Grub to install as if this was the only drive in the system. Therefore Grub is configured without adding XP to the mix. 2. There are methods to add Linux to be referenced in the Windows boot.ini file, but this requires some knowledge of Linux and command line usage. The easier way to have done this would be to allow Grub to boot both operating systems, as Grub is designed to do this more easily. 3. Now you place the Windows drive back into the system and Windows has no way to boot. If you add the usual entries to boot Windows to grub manually, the boot.ini file fails, because you have configured Grub as if there is one drive on the system. The bios boot order is changed to boot from the second drive and when grub goes to boot Windows and invoke the boot.ini it fails. This is because the boot.ini looks for the Windows files on the first drive detected in the bios. You changed this in the bios, so the essentually the first drive sensed is the one that you set the bios to boot first, the Fedora drive. So, you can't expect to change hardware configurations, or remove a drive and replace it, then expect everyting to work, as if you did not change it. How to fix it? Well, how comfortable are you with command line usage in Fedora?

Essentually, you can't install Windows on a system with no NTFS or fat32 filesystem on the drive. Windows does not see linux partitions or free space on the drive. It must have pre-partitioned space on the drive. If you install Windows XP after Linux, then you will loose the grub bootloader and not be able to boot FC5 unless you know how to recover grub, then add Windows to grub manually. The best thing to do, is to install Windows, then FC5. Of course, you need to have a tool to partition the drive before installing Windows.

Can you give us a little more information? Is this Debian Woody, Sarge, or Sid? Are you connected to the internet by broadband or DSL? Did you have internet access during the installation process, when the apt repositories were set up? When you type in ifconfig in a terminal window, as root user, do you get any eth0 output lines? You should see output something like; eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:14:2A:E9:8F:0C inet addr:192.168.1.47 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::214:2aff:fee9:8f0c/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:1264 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:1328 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:972422 (949.6 KiB) TX bytes:296788 (289.8 KiB) Interrupt:17

Please only start one thread on a topic. Starting multiple threads in different places only confuses those who try to help. Folks will respond to one thread posted, as is the case here. Staying with one thread keeps all relevent responses in one place. Since this thread has been responded to, I will delete the other two.

Great! This tells me a bit more about the problem globally.

Please be a bit more specific. Do you have any sound at all on the system? What type of audio files are you trying to play? The same rules apply to SuSE. There are patent issues on some formats, so it's important to know what type of files you are trying to play and what player you are using in SuSE.

More information is needed in order to respond to your question. When you say you tried to "load" Fedora, do you mean install it, or boot into Fedora? Is this a laptop or desktop system? Make and model, please. What model USB mouse do you have?

OK, so the issue is that the whole hard drive is cloned with G4U in Linux. So, there is no free space on the target drive? Once again, Windows does not like to be put at the end of the drive. It also will not format empty space, at least not easily without some work. To see how complex this can be see this article, as well as this one. You do realize that if you install Windows that the MBR will be overwritten and you will have to re-install grub? You need to have a way to do this. Then you would need to alter Grub to be able to boot Windows, or use the Boot.ini method and make some changes to get both operating systems to dual boot. I will assume that you don't have the Mandrake installation disks, or do you? If you do, why not; 1. Delete the Linux partitions. 2. Format the drive with one partition for Windows and free space for Linux. Use a Knoppix CD for this purpose (one fat32 the rest empty space for Linux). 3. Install windows. 4. Install Mandrake from the installation disks, using the free space at the ned of the drive. Are you doing this on a system with two hard drives, or did you clone the drive and place it in the target system?

Quote: Also, I have a Belkin F5D7010 PCMCIA card and it works well under Windows. Actually, this model is a cardbus. A small distinction, but the Linuxant drivers do work with cardbus and not with PCMCIA 16 bit adapters. So we know this is OK. This is a HUGE topic with laptops. There can be several issues. What exact make and model laptop is this? yes, it can make a difference, as it depends on if the laptop has issues with ACPI (power management) in Linux. It sounds like you got as far as setting up the card in Yast. 1. Did you set the proper WEP key (64 bit vs, 128) and essid? 2. What mode did you set the card to; managed, adhoc, open? From the linuxant faq page; Quote: There are sometimes compatibility problems when the Access Point key mode is set to "automatic" so you can try to choose "open system" or "shared key" instead. See the Linuxant faq page here. 3. You did install the linuxant driver that exactly matches your kernel version? 4. Did you try to reboot the system and see if the card is still recognized and if there is an internet connection? Get into a terminal window, as root user and type in the command iwconfig (that is the small letter "I"} There should be output that shows if an access point is seen and if WEP is actually set. The output should look something like; eth0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"" Mode: Ad-Hoc Bit Rate=54Mb/s Tx-Power=10 dBm RTS thrff Fragment thrff Encryption key: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX Power Managmentff Link Quality: 0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0 Rx invalid nwid: 0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon If the output does not show the exact encription key, then this is the issue. One the first line, the essid should match the one set on the router. Does the output show and accesss point on the first line? Does the Link quality line actually show some signal level, not zero? I know this will be difficult, since you do not have the laptop up on the internet tom post information, but, well, you get the idea. To see how complex setting up the driver can be on a laptop, see this thread about your card. I would enlist the help of you friend to help set this up, especially if he has experience with the Linuxant drivers.