hi
i found out that i must not put things in "my documents" by practice. after the first format.

About the Partitions...

I remember from the very early days, that it is indeed not smart to have just one C Partition, because if something goes wrong, and with windoze it does, you loose everything.

I used to have one C: for the system, D: for my music, E: for work and an F: for my movies. I also stored my Drivers in a seperate dir on my 'work', along with all the .exe files I needed.

Now, since I use Linux, in which I also have 7 Partitions, these come in real handy, because it is very easy to have it all allready organised.

Hi there
This kind of problem certainly happens "the other way round" as well....... and if you're not geeky enough, you're REALLY screwed!

I got a new monitor (!) three weeks ago. Unplugged the old one, plugged the new one, started the machine. Windows XP first - no problem whatsoever, worked right away, Monitor configured itself, all i had to do is to set the resolution i wanted (the old one was a 14" CRT, the new one a 17" LCD). No reboot - it all worked "out of the box".

Booted Linux - and *bang*, after splash screen - black monitor with message "input not supported". The only way out - reset button. Which screwed up GRUB, don't ask me why, Linux just has it's ways to screw things up.

OK tried a repair installation, managed to get GRUB working again, still - couldn't get into Linux, only into text mode (by using the installation CD's!). Managed to start YAST, tried to configure the new monitor which was correctly detected - yet, after "startx", the same.... black screen with "input not supported", and again, only "reset" could help.

This time it messed up the file system, so that even a repair installation failed!

So in the end, i had, ONLY TO GET THE MONITOR WORKING, to reinstall the whole Linux totally from scratch, and every single one file i had stored under it was gone!!

Thanks god i have every single data file for Linux under Windows as well, and 90% of my data under Windows only because i need only read access and Linux can read from the NTFS harddisk.

In my opinion, Linux is a very good system, certainly stable and fast too, particular on slower hardware - but if you run it, don't EVER change a bit of hardware.... and if it's a freakin' mouse, Linux WILL find a way to make you sweat and swear.

Kind regards....

Thanh

This is all too late , but normaly, you can use ctrl+alt + del, to restart. But I guess you have tried that yourself...

Might also depend on the Distro you are using, I myself change hardware on regular basis, but did not run into this problem. But I do not use monitors, but TFT-screens, maybe that is the difference..
With some older Debian versions I also had troubles with both, mouse and monitor. But SuSE 10.0, which you also are using, has a very much better hardwaredetection.
Might also be dependable on the total hardware you use, f.i. how old it is..
Nevertheless, it costs a lot of time, and you learn a lot while finding solutions...

ctrl+alt+F6, login as root, 'init 3', 'X -configure', 'cp xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf'. A quick fix.

The funny thing about this issue is that I have a box that does not support booting from CD, and what was recommended to me was installing the hdd on another comp, putting my distro on it there, and then moving it back to the old comp. Which is what I'm going to do when I get a new hdd. I put Suse on it and now dont want to take it out of that machine.

This is strange, because in your Bios, it is allways nessesary, and so possible to set your boot priorities.
On some IBM machines, you have to use enter when booting up, and than F10, to change your boot options.

As far as I know, there exists no machine in which the boot options can not be changed.
If there is a CD- or DVD-drive in the box, you must be able to boot from it.

Some machines use Del to enter set-up.
You only have to find out, how you can enter the setup, where the Bios options can be set, or changed.

At boot time, you have to be quick, to get into your bios, because else it Boots like usual.

The primary Bootscreen, usual shows which key to hit, to enter setup.

Rare problem. It is on specific models of compaq computers, the way it was explained to me was that the ability to change the settings and enter into the setup was actually on the hard drive. The board was really odd too, no distinguishing numbers or brand name. I tried almost every key or combination of keys, but still no luck. But aside from that issue, I'm about to trash that board anyway. It's older than the person I'm building the computer for.

Two brand names to avoid, no matter what OS:

Dell
Compaq

I can't figure out how to remove the cover on a Compaq a neighbor wants me to repair. I hope it isn't quirky about video cards.

If the MB is as old as you say, you will only create problems for future adaptions.
So it indeed might be wise to take a more recent one.
The price of a good MB is not that high.
You allways will have problems with extending RAM f.i., or be bound to specific CPU's.
Or chipset dependable Videocards.
Very important also is the busspeed, which will be much to low.

Antique PC's can sometimes very well be used as server, and/or as firewall, for some PC's behind it.
IMHO, it is never good to build something, when you now in advance, it will not live up to some expectations....

I have actually had good experiences with Compaq laptops. Granted they've got their quirks, but pretty much any laptop has them. As far as Desktop systems, I couldn't agree more with you. They seem to be good solutions for certain segments (like corporate who buy and upgrade regularly) and wouldn't need an expansion of the machine, the same goes for Dell computers (AFAIK, they're even tighter in that department than Compaq).

I'm still trying to decide if I want Ubuntu, Slackware, or Mandriva on my Desktop. I like Ubuntu and Mandriva, but have not had much luck installing Slackware (very flavor selective laptop). The key to which one I install is hardware recognition. I need it to recognize a Linksys SRX PCI card. Thats the only card I could find that was powerful enough to hit my router consistently. It will be a fun transition though, because dude, it's a dell.

How about SuSE 10.0?

Already have it on my laptop and constantly have issues with YOU. Only about half of the packages update, and when I check dependancies I try to fix them, and only half of that completes, then back to YOU, until I end up with less and less of the patches. But it still works, so oh well.

Be careful here, Dell and Compaq both make good and bad models. typically the presario and Inspiron brands are the crap while the Evo and Latitude brands are good.
My little Latitude is going on 3+ years now without problems despite my dropping it a few times.
I've had the misfortune to work on a few inspirons and presarios and would never buy one for myself, but I've also have the same bad experiance with Apple and Sony. But a compaq Evo or Dell latitude would be a great box.