Installed Mandrake doesn't work
 

I have installed Mandrake 9.1 to a new PC build that I just finished. Got everything to load and in the summary page it states that everything went well and to reboot the PC. As soon as I do reboot it starts as if the OS will load but instead the screen starts to show the number 99 all over the screen and there is a thumping sound coming from the case.

BTW this is the second HDD I have tried to install this OS on and it did the same thing only I was unable to get through the entire install process. I need help!!!! aghhhhhh

The 99 message means that the boatloader, lilo, has failed. One thing to try is to reinstall and use grub for your bootloader instead of lilo.

Is there anything unusual about your disk configuration?

I thought the bootloader was only needed if I was using a dual OS on the drive. I am using a PCI adapter to connect to my Maxtor 80GB hard drive because I have my optical drives on the primary and secondary master IDE.

The EXACT same thing happened to me too......except I thought it was a windows XP error and ended up reformatting windows. This was after i deleted the partition that linux mandrake was on.......I'm going to install mandrake again but how do you use grub instead of LILO as the bootloader?

The only difference is that I'm not going to using a dual boot OS. The only OS is going to be Mandrake Linux that's if I can get it to work.

"I'm going to install mandrake again but how do you use grub instead of LILO as the bootloader?"

This should be an install option somewhere in the Mandrake install. Also you should tell the Mandrake installer to create a boot floppy for you which you can use when the MBR boot loader fails.

You can also use CD1 as a rescue CD instead of a floppy (If you can boot from CDrom)

Never did figure out what was wrong with the install of Mandrake 9.1 so I just d/l Mandrake 9.2 rc2 and installed with no problems at all. Very weird. Love the look of this OS and so many applications that came with it. I think I'm going to like this very much and will learn more and more about Linux as I read more here at LinuxQuestions.org

BTW how do I connect to the Internet with Mandrake? This is a secondary PC that I have Linux on and I use a Compaq USB adapter to connect to my 802.11b network and I need to configure it so it will.