I posted this in the Mandrake section but Im not getting any responses.

For some reason, my mandrake is taking a long time to boot up. It did this since I first installed it, and I've been busy getting everything set up for the past day or two, so Ive kinda disregarded it, but now I want to get it fixed. When it gets to the loading screen right after grub or lilo or whatever it comes with, it shows a blue screen with a progress bar, and the progress bar stays empty for like 2-3 minutes before it loads. Once the bar starts going, the OS boots in about 30 seconds, so I just need to get rid of this load time. Any ideas?

Then I found something new and posted this..

Seems I found what might be the problem.. if I hit esc and watch the text of what it's doing.. it looks like it's hanging right after it detects my CD drive. It says hdd: lite-on etc etc.. then it hangs for like a minute and says hde: no response, then hangs again and says hdg: no response. Is there some way to change it so it doesnt search for these nonexsistant drives?

Hi.

1. Are you using the default "KDE" desktop? if so, then click on the "K" on the taskbar menu then go to "Configuration" then "Configure Your Computer" the "Mandrake Control Center" should appear.

2. Select "System" from the menu then "DrakXService" look for "harddrake" and uncheck the box "On boot" this will prevent the startup from probing for new hardware. ofcourse you will need to run "harddrake" manually if you add or change hardware to your PC.

Another way to bring up the "Mandrake Control Center" is to type (at a console):

"/usr/sbin/drakconf.real" (without the quotes)

You may also use the console, to stop (or start) "harddrake" by using the following commands:

"service harddrake stop"
"service harddrake start"

"Seems I found what might be the problem.. if I hit esc and watch the text of what it's doing.. it looks like it's hanging right after it detects my CD drive. It says hdd: lite-on etc etc.. then it hangs for like a minute and says hde: no response, then hangs again and says hdg: no response. Is there some way to change it so it doesnt search for these nonexsistant drives?"

What you describe is normal behavior if you have a secondary IDE controller card installed in your system and no devices attached to them. In that case your motherboard BIOS will pass control to the secondary BIOS on the IDE controller card. Your secondary BIOS will query ide2 and eventually time out when the query is never answered. Similarly for ide3.

If you really do have a secondary IDE controller card installed with no devices attached then the solution to your problem is to remove the secondary IDE controller card.

___________________________________
Be prepared. Create a LifeBoat CD.
http://users.rcn.com/srstites/LifeBo...home.page.html

Steve Stites

I have no secondary IDE controller card. So Im going to try the first posts suggestion now. Hope it works.

No luck with that.. anyone else?

Going back to jailbait's suggestion, check you bios and make sure the unused ide interfaces are tuned off and not set to auto.