Hello,

Well 4 days and many, many hours later I still haven't succeeded in installing Mandrake 10.0. I have compaq presario 7360 that doesn't support CD Rom boot in the bios so booting from the CD Rom is not an option. I have read many articles, followed their instructions to the "T" and still I am back at square one. There are two scenarios that are most constant and never change.

1.) After I make a boot disk and reboot my computer I get a

GRUB loading stage2. Read Error.

This message appears mainly after I've copied HD_Grub.img to my diskette, and rebooted the computer in an attempt to install Mandrake from directly off the HD.

2.) All efforts to install from my burnt ISO CD's is for naught as well. I copy cdrom.img to the floppy diskette, and with the CD in the CD Rom drive and the floppy in the A: Drive I reboot my computer. Just as I get my hopes up and I think the boot session is going to work I get a one liner at the top of the screen

Syslinux 1.67 Mandrake copyright (c) 1004-2001 H. Peter Anvin

and the screen freezes there.

The CD's are good because they work perfectly on my other computer that has CD Rom boot capabilities. I guess I would like to know if anyone has have any luck installing Mandrake via a floppy on a presario. If yes, what did you do.


M Y S Y S T E M : Compaq PC 7360 - System Type X86-based PC - Processor x86 Family 5 Model 8 Stepping 12 AuthenticAMD ~500 Mhz
BIOS Version/Date Compaq 686S4, 7/25/2000 (bios has been updated).

Any suggestions and/or comments appreciated. I really want to get Mandraked up and running.

Thanks,
Ppsychling

Mandrake changed their bootstrap routines in 10, I had infinite problems doing the same thing you are trying to do and consequently went with redhat for that particular older box. I love mandrake, it's a great OS but on older machines they kinda took themselves out of the ballgame with the bootstrap modifications.

linux_terror

For all of you guys and gals out there who are having installation issues with Mandrake because of

1.) You can't configure your bios so that it's boots from your CD rom because your computer doesn't offer "CD" as a boot option in the Bios

OR

2.) You've burned the Mandrake ISOs to CDs and are still having issues with trying to boot using the combination method, diskette in the floppy drive and the MDK CD in the CD Rom drive

I've found a great utility called SMART BOOT @ linux.simple.be/tools/sbm. Here's a quote from the site!!!

"This nifty little floppy bootdisk allows selecting various devices to boot from a menu, and even allows booting a CD-ROM in machines where the BIOS doesn't support it. If your BIOS supposedly supports booting from a CD-ROM but it isn't working, this disk might be just what you need!"

It works and I installed MANDRAKE by booting from the CD rom.

Ppsychling

Thank you for that cool solution


I have another doubt.............
What happens if the inittab file is lost?
Palletooru