danleff

One of three possabilities, I believe; 1. What motherboard is this? You may need to set a parameter when doing the install. I believe that one install option in to install with acpi disabled. You may need this depending on your system. 2. More likely a bad burn. Is this a commercial Mandrake (official) cd set, or "home burned" by the e-bay seller. If generic, my advice - never buy such disks from a seller unless it is an official version/copy. 3. The burn is not compatible with your cdrom drive. How old is the cdrom drive or system? You can download Mandrake from a mirror on their website, located here.

As you can see from the link that I provided, the printer is made for the Windows environment. Unless someone like Samsung or Linux printer driver devcelopers decide to make drivers at some point, is hard to say. Perhaps someone else has some ideas, but issues abound with muti-function fax-printer-copier hardware in Linux. Generally, you can get the printer to work, but not both the printer and fax. The exception is some HP multi-function systems, which some have had success with. There are a lot of posts about ATI cards. Is this an SE or pro version card? The pro card is reported to work, but not the SE flavor, at least not in 3d mode. This is what ATI has to say; Please note - ATI Customer Care has NO INFORMATION regarding: which ATI chips or products are supported in a particular version of Linux or XFree86 how to configure Linux for a given ATI chip or product when or if drivers are being developed to support ATI chips in a given version of Linux or XFree86 what features these drivers might have So, ATI is not really linux friendly. There are drivers on the ATI website, but they are for XFree86. I'm not sure about how they work with the X-org "X-windows" Linux graphical environment found in Mandrake 10.1. I would do a search on goggle on the specific model and see what you find. The hardware database on Linux Compatible shows both models. One user reports success with the pro model, another no luck with 3d on the SE model.

What Linux distro and version are you using? Now the bad news. Take a look at this article at LinuxPrinting.org

Take a look at this thread at LinuxQuestions.org. Also let us know what the system specs. are for the system that you are doing the install on. If this is an older system, then there may be problems with the older cdrom drive reading the media, say compatibility of the drive with cdrw media, if that is what you used. Other suggestions are; 1. Are you sure that you have a good download of the iso files? Did you check the validity of the burned disks before install? 2. What media are you using to burn the disks? Or, do you have the commercial version cd's? 3. Use cdr media to do the burn, not cdrw. 4. Burn the iso's at 4X or 8X speed (if you downloaded the iso files). Do not burn the iso's at the fatest speed rating of the cdrw drive.

From what I have read, there seems to be a bios bug with cacheable memory. Take a look at the compatability report here. Is this the -VM model? Are you using sata drives?

Maybe it's been a long day for me, but you sure don't sound like someone who wants to dump Windows! I'm known for my short direct answers sometimes, so here it goes. Get a copy of Mepis and load it. It won't touch the hard drive...it will run from the cd. Look around and get comfortable. Look at the following packages; Bluefish or Quanta Plus for web design. Gimp for photo editing. Try out some of the inlcuded games just for fun. No, they are not hardcore games. Look around the menu choices of other included packages (apps.). Tru out some Linux alternative programs that look interesting to you. And yes, there are a lot more choices! Your comments sound like some users at work. We just converted over to Windows XP systems. People became frustrated at first. They wanted everthing to function exactly as it did in Windows 2000 or NT. All of the sudden, they started saying "You mean all I have to do is...? If you expect no learning curve, then Linux is not for you. However, if you are interested in finding and exploring something new, try my suggestions. Come back and ask questions. There are a lot of great folks here that will be willing to help. But, you have to expect to be open minded, not think in "Windows" terms only and I think that you may be surprised at what you find! BTW, Firefox comes in a Linux flavor, as well.

Ouch! Don't you have some duct tape? Only kidding! I would download the latest release of Mandrake 10.1, of course, if you have access to a cd burner and high speed internet. Then you can try out the distro before plunking down cash for the commercial version. I applaud your support by buying the full packages, but if you decide to test out other distros, you may elect to do test run before buying the full commercial product. Your call. I would try Suse first. You may decide to stick with it all the way and go no futher. I say the newest versions, as the support for your hardware (sata, printer and video card) are more likely. Support for ATI video cards is limited in general, unfortunately. Sata support seems more solid in the latest versions. It only stands to reason. Sata is relatively new hardware for Linux and much better supported in the new releases.

saw an article on Frank's Corner on running this game that may help.

Yes, use the 64-bit versions for best performance. make sure that you try the latest versions of Suse, Mandrake 10.1 or Fedora Core 3 for the best results with your video card. One more good article on Win 98 and larger hard drives located here. Let us know how it goes with sata! I would be very curious about this. Oh, and a good article on sata and Win 98SE is at PC World.

Nice post blackpage! From what I have been reading it's a catch 22 with Win 98. I believe drivers are needed for sata, or possibly the capability of the bios. Windows 98 has a 137 gb limit on reading hard drives, so, I don't know how this will affect the installation on a 250 gig drive. If you are lucky, by keeping the fat32 partition smaller than this? Might be a sector reading issue though. LinuxPrinting.org does not mention your printer at all. I suspect that you may get the printer to work and maybe the scanner. Big question on the onboard nic capability, especially wireless. References: Sata and Win 98 For printing infomation look at LinuxPrinting.org

Good questions. Are any of the drives sata drives? this will make a difference. Suse 9.1 Pro refused to install on my sata drive. I ended up placing it on my ide drive. So, if Suse is one of the main distros that you will be using, then XP and Suse on the master. Generally you want the faster (usually the larger, but not always) as the master drive. Never did this configuration, but I would assume that Win 98 and XP will want to be the first install, so probably one on the master and one (?Win 98) on the slave (assuming no sata drives). I'll look around for some how-to's on the subject. One example od such a setup is here. Another is here. In terms of the HP, it has been done. I remember reading an article on this a while back. Which model number id the HP? I'll try to find this as well. Start by looking here.

There are a few ways to do this. What you have to consider, is that each install of Windows, whether it be 98 or 98 to XP, will want to overwrite your MBR. But, it can be done on one physical drive, but would be better on two. You don't really need System Commander to do this. I saw that there is a System Commander 8, but did not see a version 9. Is this a new release? Also, there is a great how-to on the VCOM web site about installing, located here. The main install quides are here

Two things. First, you may want to consider a newer version of Mandrake, which generally has good NVIDIA support, but realize the date of manufacture of the video card versus the release date of the version of Mandrake that you are using. More likely the issue is your monitor. When you installed Mandrake, I assume you had a graphical interface during the install? Did you use the video wizard to set up the video and monitor settings for your system? You may be trying to operate out of the range of the sync. rates of the monitor. Also, please post the system make/model that you have, or the motherboard that you are using. What monitor are you using? I looked at the Gigabyte web site and did not see any linux based drivers. What is the full name of the driver included on the CD?

Let's start with the basics first. Did you purchase the set of CD's, or burn them yourself? If you burned them, what speed did you burn them at? ISO's like to be burned at 4X or 8X speed, no faster, on quality media, preferably cdr media. I assume that you inserted the cd burned with iso #1 to boot of off, not disk #2? Sometimes you get a bad iso image. Did you verify the iso checksum of the disk to assure that the image was valid and downloaded fully?

You may want to try the rpm driver supplied by Canon located here

Congrats! That was one option I was thinking about, but did not know if you were up for it, using the boot.ini as the Linux bootloader.

First, let me ask a few questions. This is a fairly new system. Any reason why you are trying to install SuSe 8.2, rather than a newer version? Most likely the problem is the hardware on your system is too new for this version od SuSe. Could you post the motherboard make/model or system make/model that you have? Is this the net/boot install cd of SuSe, or the full version on CD? If you burned the CD yourself, what speed did you burn the cd at?

Quote: The box with Linux will be built purely to "mess up" but hopefully with separate partitions and such, recovery will be less painful. This is also why I am willing to do it as it will be on a separate computer than my main Windows run computer. The proper name for such a system is "test box." Sorry, could not resist!

Then there is no reason why Knoppix should cause a problem. When you exited Knoppix, did you allow a normal shutdown, or just power off the computer? When rebooting or turning on the system, do you get a post (bios messages) and any beeps? Can you hear the cpu fan spinning? And you did remove the Knoppix cdrom before re-booting? If so, does Windows try to start, or do you just get a blank screen at this point? Is the monitor power indicator on at boot? Is the cdrom drive that you used to boot Knoppix an internal one, or external cdrom drive?

Did you do a hard drive install of Knoppix, or run it off the Live CD? If a hard drive install how did you choose the bootloader? What version of Knoppix is this? Do you have Windows XP on the system as well?

...or more importantly, what video card is in your system? ATI, NVIDIA? Give us some specifications for your system...Dell, Gateway (model number)? Desktop or laptop? How much memory is in the system? Do you have a USB keyboard, or PS2? When you installed Suse, did you get a good graphical install, or did it default to a text install? Did you set up the video resolution during the install? If so, what settings did you choose? It's always a good idea to check out hardware compatibility before installing a distro. This avoids any headaches later on. In terms of drivers, in most cases you don't need drivers, but this would depend on what hardware you have on the system. Sorry for all the questions, but without knowing what your system specs. are, it is difficult to give valid answers.

My Debian is real rusty, but what I do remember, is that the desgnation for the mouse changed with the kernel 2.6 series. Look in the XF86config-4 file under the mouse section and see if it says /dev/psaux or /dev/input/mice. Also, at a console, type lsmod as root user and see if modules psmouse and mousedev are loaded.

What filesystem is on your windows drive? If fat32, there is a file size limitation of 4 gig. If the Fedora DVD is more than 4 gig in size, this may be the issue. Where did you get the dvd image from?

What sort of error(s) are you getting with the PartitionMagic boot disks? With lilo, how are you modifying lilo? For example, are you running /sbin/lilo after making changes? Don't do that now, if you are not, but I am just trying to see if you are writing the changes to the MBR when you are making alterations to lilo.

Actually, what you should see as a choice for XP is hda1. I believe that the error that was made is making the RedHat partition active. The active partition should always be the boot partition, in your case, hda1. I'm a little rusty on lilo, but don't use the grub commands, as the syntax is a little different. Let me look at this and see what the best solution might be. Do you have PartitionMagic boot/rescue disks on hand?