Hey everybody, I'm a linux newbie and I am kind of stuck here.

Here's the deal: 4 months ago I bought an acer aspire one with linpus linus lite on it. Since I had no working desktop at the moment I decided to install xp on it. Here's where everything went wrong.
After I installed Xp I had to make changes in the MBR. Since the usb install ( no CD ROM drive in my acer ) was mounted as C: he couldn't find my xp hd install or something like that.

Now I'm trying to switch back to a linux version but keep getting stuck at the moment Im trying to boot it from my hd. Tried everything, from editing lilo.conf to making everything from scratch with Pmagic or changing to grub, nothing worked. Is there somebody who can tell me what to do to make a working ( I prefer a install of linpus Linus or so ) install on my HD? I can't get my head around it anymore.


Greets,

Sieb

When you are attempting to boot off the hard disk, what messages (if any) do you see on the screen?

Thanks

JIm

Hey Jim, it's in Dutch, Translated its something like ''error loading operating system''


Thanks in advance,

Sieb

You had Linpus Lit. You installed xp. Could you ever boot from xp? Did you install xp over Linpus? Do you have both Linpus and xp on the drive? The USB install, of what, xp? Are you planning to just install a version of Linux now?

Can you get to a grub shell? If so, try to boot the kernel directly.

Taking from: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/lfs/...er08/grub.html

grub > root (hd0,0) # Or whichever partition the `kernel' is on; to find this, use `tab-completion'
example: root (<TAB>
LIST: hd0, hd1, fd0

root (hd0,<TAB>
LIST: 0 ext3fs # I know `0' to be where my kernel is stored,
# in my case: /boot/bzImage W.R.T.
# the ext3fs filesystem on the disk
1 ext3fs
2 ext3fs
3 ext3fs
grub > root (hd0,0) # Carriage return!

grub > kernel /boot/bzImage root=/dev/hda # Whatever the name and location of your kernel is, with root=
# option pointing to the `/dev/hdX' name by which
# your kernel `knows' your root partition
# If you don't know this, you an leave it off, and when the kernel
# goes to mount the `root' partition, it will panic, listing out
# available options: ex.: hda, hdb, hdc, ...
# Then reboot, and try different ones until you find the correct one



grub > boot

That should work for you! Then just write this information into grub's menu.lst in order to not have to enter the grub `prompt' every time you boot.

---rm_dash_rf_star

If you are planing to install a linux version and delete everything in your hard disk then i think the problem will be resolved. I advise you to recover your datas that are in your hard disk, then format this one and install the Linux version you want, you will see that everything will work perfectly.

Yes I had linpus, formatted drive / partition and put XP on it.
Yes, I was able to boot from XP, but before I was able to do that, I got the same error I have now, so I figured it went wrong there. Between Linpus and XP I had Ubuntu, no probs. I fixed it @ xp by editing boot.ini. ( Don''t know what exactly, because I got help, but had something to do Windows was installed on D: because USB was seen as C:. ) There's something the same with Feather here: it seems that he thinks that my HD is HDC1, while in the original lilo.conf is stated that boot is SDA ( which is my usb) I tried to edit that, no luck.

Im trying to get feather linux to work, or any other fast linx distribution. Linpus started in 8 seconds, perfect for on the couch.


Is Grub an option? I tried to use it. Couldn't download it directly on my Acer since my networkcard isnt detected, so extraced grub from dsl and put it in my boot map on my hd (hdc1)Since the dsl config was there ( trying to get feather to work ) I probably did not configured it the right way. If I'm trying to edit lilo.conf ( comes with feather ) I get an error saying that two disks are using the same channel. ( 0x81 or something )

Well, that isn't the case. I formatted partitions with Pmagic and Fdisk, still no luck... Or I'm missing something during the format.
Put the partitions on primary, flagged as ''boot'', still the same error.

I hope you guys have some more suggestions or can tell this noob what he's doing wrong .

Greets,

Sieb

Edit: I installed Feather again tried some other options. now I dont get the error at startup, but grub. Dont know what to do now though, getting errors back at everything I try. Strange because Install asked where to put lilo.conf. picked mbr for lilo.conf. Any ideas?

I don't know what `Feather is', but I don't think that matters.

Grub is simply an alternative to Lilo. You either use one or the other.
I gave you grub, (GRand Unified Bootloader), instructions, because I
did not know what the equivalent instructions would be for lilo,
(LInux LOader).

There is a lot to reply to here!---I'll just give what I would
recommend that you do.

(1) Install grub.---See the link that I gave above. The procedure
----for you is going to be: load a LiveCD, type `grub' as root, and
----follow the instructions in the link. My feeling is that you
----should install `grub' to the MBR as per the instructions in
----the link.

(2) Then follow the instructions that I gave above, learning as
----much as you can from the link. (Linux From Scratch in
----general contains a lot of useful info.)!


P.S. DSL probably has your network card loading as a module,
but not loading automatically for some reason. In order
to activate the module, you use the `modprobe' command.
As I can not give you exact instructions on how to find
the name of the module, I would recommend just using
another LiveCD, such as knoppix.

My thoughts on what to do if you do learn the module
name is:
# modprobe <ModuleName>
# cd /etc/rc.d/init.d # Or wherever the bootscripts are located
# ./network restart

What this will do is run the script that runs
when the system boots. Passing the `restart'
parameter to the `case' statement. Thus
the network will restart, with support
for your network card in the kernel (as a module).

FYI: `lspci' is a utility that you can use in order to find
out which hardware is present in your system.

Other useful info. utilities include: lsmod, lsusb, and
probably a few more ls* commands.