I tried searching, but to my knowledge I can't find anything related to this. I am looking to get a linux install dual-booting with XP, and am having all kinds of problems with compatibility. I used partition magic to wipe out a portion of the xp partition, and have left it as unpartitioned. When I boot off the latest dvd iso available for download, it comes up fine. I can get upto the hard drive (controller?) driver install, and the system hangs, while the mouse works. Restarting I turned off hardware auto-detection, and proceeded. First all options won't recognize my Logitech Trackball, and won't let me proceed till I click next. Is there a bug in Mandriva preventing me from installing this on my setup? And if there is, can someone suggest another distro that might work. Specs are as follows:

Athlon 64 x2 3800+
Shuttle SN95P (nforce 4 ultra chipset)
2gb of Corsair platinum ram
256mb 7800gt PCIE
300gb Maxtor Sata1 drive
NEC- 3550a I think?
100gb left unpartitioned
Logitech USB optical trackball mouse (tried a Logitech mx1000 also)

Also I tried using the windows installer, and I click on the option to install like 50 times, and it just sits there. Also I have the raid controller disabled in the bios.

If it helps, I rate myself as advanced with windows based machines, but a notch above novice when it comes to linux\unix.

Mandriva has problems with nForce4 chipset. Mine freezes also when detecting chipset. I got passed if I started the installation with "linux noapic" command.

If you're seeking another distro which would support your hardware then I recommend Gentoo (if you know how to use linux) or SuSE 10.0 (if your new to linux).

At the moment I use the SuSE. It detected all my hardware correctly and is working just fine even I just bought a new computer with bluetooth keyboard and such.

Gentoo is also nice if you have patience to compile all programs. I'm through with it for the moment as I got it broken by overwriting few config files

My hardware:

Athlon 64 x2 3800+
DFI LANPARTY Ultra-D
2Gb A-Data
256mb 7800 Gt
400Gb Western Digital S-ATA
40Gb IDE
Logitech MX5000

Well thanks for the first part, I'm starting to see a pattern with most of the linux distros not supporting the NF4 based NIC during install (Debian flatly tells you to install driver, or won't continue). However my mouse hangs (won't move at all) after about 10 seconds in gui. Not caring I push on, and get to partitioning and formating. It gets to the point where the partitions have been setup, and sda5 is set to /, and sda7 is sent to /home. As soon as I tell it to continue wether it be formatting or skipping it, it gives me No HDlist found error, and takes me back to partition setup. I tried this in both the GUI and text based setup, and it comes to the same error. I did some research, and found some said a corrupt or incomplete iso would cause it, did a m5p? check, and it says iso is correct. I'm going to try redownloading iso just in case, but otherwise I'm stuck with Mandriva. On to checking Fedora perhaps.......