danleff

First of all welcome! We need more information. What distro (Mandriva, Fedora) are you using and what version? There are 100 different distros on the Distrowatch website (top 100). Multiply that by an average of 3 possible versions....you get the idea! Each may do things slightly differently. Some mount all your windows and linux partitions on the desktop (say some versions of Mepis) and others just mount Windows partitions by default. In terms of formatting drives, perhaps you can tell us what you have right now and we can go from there. Give us some idea what hardware you have now, and what you are specifically looking to do. Most Linux distros have formatting utilities within their installers, but, what are you running right now? Windows XP? This can make a difference, as can the system that you have, especially if Windows is pre-installed on your system.

OK, good, now the system is booting directly into a GUI? Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Did you download the correct driver for your system? Could you post some system specifications, so that we can see what you are running? Also, what is the exact name of the driver installation file that you downloaded? 1. Motherboard make and model, or computer make and model? 2. Processor - this will determine the NVIDIA driver to use 3. How much ram in the system? 4. How are you connecting to the internet? Do you have a working internet connection? The reason that I ask, is that the NVIDIA installation script will look for the kernel source. If it does not find one, it will attempt to download one for you for the drivers. 5. What are you going to be doing with this installation, in terms of tasks? Gaming, or just everday tasks? When installing nVIDIA drivers, you should be at a "runlevel" of just a console (like when "X" was not running and you tried to invoke it using "startx"). It's important to read the "readme" instructions on the drivers page. I don't recoommend doing the installation from the GUI, as if something goes wrong, then it is much easier to recover from the console. Obviously, your video card is not directly supported with the native drivers in Mandrake 10.1, which may have been released before your video card came out. But, once we know a few things, you can install the kernel sources easily, if you have the three Mandrake installation cd disks at the ready. But to answer the question, go to the Mandrake Control Center to install the kernel source. If you are just using the installation cd's then; Menu-->System--> Configuration-->Configure Your Computer (put in your root password)..Look at installable packages. Once there, type in kernel-source Click on the kernel source package and tell Mandrake to install it.

I never used Ubuntu, but the link I gave you to the wiki speaks about custom partitioning. If it is like most distros, you can choose "custom" for partitioning and do a layout the way that you want, or tell it to use freee space on the NTFS partition. However, I don't know how Ubuntu handles NTFS volumes, so I can't comment on it. You may want to check the Ubuntu forum and check this out. Most allow options to use available free space on the NTFS partition. But I always use PartitionMagic to set them up ahead of time, then point the install to the previously created ext3 or whatever partition that I made for the installation. Personally, I don't trust qtparted, which comes on Knoppix and Mepis. I've had some problems with it in the past and don't know if they resolved them. Better to use a proven tool to be safe and always defrag NTFS first within Windows first and back up any important data, just in case. Anybody got a free utility that handles NTFS safely?

Once you are at the console, make sure that you are at root user; su(enter key) input your password for root user when prompted. Once there, type in; drakxconf (hit the enter key) Choose "display" I believe you have xorg (or xfree) scroll down to that and choose "vesa" as your driver. Test this and see if it works, by hitting the test button. If this works,then we can see about fine tuning the xorg file. This should give you a gui when you boot into Mandrake (Mandriva).

You will need sata support, so use a new version of the distro that you choose. Distro = name of Linux product ie; Mandriva, Fedora version = 10.2..... In my sata system, Mandriva 10.2 (Limited 2005) runs very well and is well suited for new users. Fedora Core 4 works well. You may wish to "test drive" a Linux distro first, with a distro that is a live cd, which runs off a cd. Mepis and Knoppix are good choices. Again, make sure the release notes mention support for sata...use the latest version. But more importantly, what other hardware will you be using, such as a scanner printer and so forth? Most importantly, how are you going to connect to the internet? Dialup, DSL or Broadband. Most internel modems (dialup) packaged in systems are so called winmodems (designed to run in Windows) and may or may not work. Let us know what other hardware (peripherals) and internet connection you will be using and you will get a lot of input from members here.

See the Ubuntu wiki installation guide, located here. Make sure to defrag the Windows drive first, to make sure that no files are stray close to the end of the NTFS partition. Or, you can use a tool, such as PartitionMagic to resize the NTFS volume and make an ext3 partition before the installation. Another tool is 7Tools Partition Manager which should do the job.

Yes MSI has been good for me also. I also have 2 Soyo boards and an Asus motherboard...all rock solid performers.

I just installed Wine in Mandrake 2005 and found the same thing. I wonder if the config file has been replaced. Is this a source installation of wine that you have or a binary installation...say an rpm in Mandrake or Fedora? What version of Wine? Do you have other files in that directory...like system.reg and user.reg/userdef.reg files? What are you trying to install and what directions are you using?

Well, in terms of differing in grub depending on the Linux version, this is true in some cases. What version and distro of Linux are you using? Any sata drives on the system, or a PCI controller that any ide or sata drives are connected to? The other issue is raid ide onboard, where you can use the first raid ide device as an ide drive only? If you look at the /boot/grub/devices.lst file, it should tell you what the designations are. Also, type in fdisk -l as root user in a console (that is the letter l, not the number 1), you will see the general linux designations, say hda, hdb...depending on how many drives are in the system.

You may have the wrong setting. Is the Geforce card a vga card or pci? If vga, then you need to disable onboard video, not vga as the preferred video card. P.S. nevermind, I looked at the manual. So, the geoforce is a PCI card? If you choose in the bios; advanced-->Primary Graphics Adapter--> PCI/int VGA it reboots continuously?

I was a little interested to see what Glorioso used as an "extra option" to get it to work. I did not use grub from Fedora to install to the mbr, as I already had another distro's grub on my system. Did you tell Fedora to install grub to the mbr or a boot partition? Did you pick Fedora as the default boot option during the installation? Do you have Windows (version) on your system also or another Linux distro? Hopefully, Glorioso sees this post and responds.

This sounds like a dedicated ADSL line for a business, so that you don't have to dial-in? I assume that you are connected to a network via cat5 cables and a NIC card and not directly through a USB modem? I'm very much a beginner at DSL, just got Verizon a little over a month ago. It took me a while to get it set up, depending on the distro. RedHat 9.1 is fairly old and more difficult to set up. Any reason why you are not using Fedora Core 4? This is much easier to set up. If you have a progressive DSL provider, they can be helpful. Unfortunately, my questions were met with silence on the phone and a statement "we don't support Linux."

The question is what are you trying to do that requires ncurses? However, Knoppix has a package manager, called apt-get. You can use that at a terminal window, as root user to install needed packages. Do a search on google on knoppix apt-get and read how to use apt-get. I have not used Knoppix in a while, but basically do the following; type in at root user; apt-get update (hit the enter key) This will update the packages list available on the server. Then when this if finished; apt-get install ncurses But again, what is it that you are trying to install that needs ncurses, then we can give more specific advice.

Could you give a little more information? You are running Mandrake now, so I assume that you installed it with the same cdrw drive, or was it added after installing Mandrake? If you installed the cdrw drive after installing Mandrake, did you jumper the drive properly? Is it detected in the bios, or seen as the system starts up?

First of all, no apology needed. The hardware should be fine. Quote: ok - so everything is running fine until i connect the linux box to the router, then everything slows down and it takes a good few seconds just to bring up a terminal. Are you connecting to broadband or DSL? What do you mean by "until I connect the linux box to the router?" Is the system connected to the router when you boot, or are you trying to plug in the cat5 cable after Mandrake is up? You can share the internet connection through the router...not through the XP box. So, if you have broadband; Modem--> router @ the first router connection. Mandrake box via NIC card--> router connection #2 via cat5 XP box via NIC card--> third connection on the router Did you set up an internet connection during the Mandrake installation via DHCP? If not, you can set up the connection via the Mandrake Control Center. By "terminal" do you mean a Mandrake terminal (console)? Mandrake has a nice tool, if it was installed, to run samba nicely. But more on that later.

The potential issue is more likely the video card in your system. What video card do you have?

maybe because the link is almost 1 1/2 years old?

What distro are you using and what mail client (package)?

If you are still here, try; 1. start-->System Tools-->terminal 2. Type in; system-config-soundcard 3. At the prompt, type in your root password The sound dialog box should come up.

Can you post a link to the directions that you used to add the grub settings to the boot.ini file? Was this for IDE or sata drives, which are different. On the sound card. If you want to use a PCI sound card, you need to disable legacy (onboard) sound in the bios. Otherwise, Fedora will try to default to the onboard sound and usually miss the PCI card. What motherboard are you using?

I took a look around and came up empty handed. Apparently this is the Intel Azalia ICH6R chpset onboard. I would expect that drivers have not been fully developed yet for alsa. It is also not listed in the alsa web page sound card matrix. Sorry thatI could not be more helpful.

I use Firefox, but the same should apply. Go to (in Mozilla), Edit-->Preferences--> Cookies. If there are any suspicious cookies, delete them. Try this again after he has used the system. If you see suspicious cookies that most likely come from a [censored] site....

Glorioso, then try this; Boot the Fedora cd disk #1 (installation disk). At the installation menu, type in linux rescue (hit the enter key) Once the system loads, at the terminal prompt, Type in chroot /mnt/sysimage then; grub-install /dev/hda We eliminate the recheck code, as grub apparently was on another boot partition. Note if you get any error messages, or if you get some output with no errors. Then type in the command; reboot See if the grub menu comes up and you can choose your os, either Windows, or Linux.

Glorioso, try this; Boot the Fedora cd disk #1 (installation disk). At the installation menu, type in linux rescue (hit the enter key) Once the system loads, at the terminal prompt, Type in chroot /mnt/sysimage then; grub-install --recheck/dev/hda This may take a minute or so and should just return a command prompt with no errors. Once it does, type in reboot and see if grub comes up normally.

Has he figured out how to delete cookies yet?