Help - Uninstalling Mandrake, installing Red Hat
 

Sorry if this is a bit long...

I installed Mandrake-Linux 8.0 a few days ago, my first venture into the Linux world. I have an old Pentium 133 PC that I am dedicating to Linux.

Then, I decided I needed a book that would help me learn the OS. I bought a book that included Red Hat 6.2, deciding that I would simply blow away Mandrake to load Red Hat.

Little did I know...Mandrake is not being cooperative. It does not allow me to boot from my CD-ROM, unless I insert the Mandrake CD.

Next, I tried to re-partition my drive. I used a Win95 boot floppy with FDISK. Wouldn't work.

Booted from the Mandrake CD, went through the install to the partitioning / formatting step, then stopped.

Used the Win95 FDISK again, partitioned and formatted the drive as FAT16. I formatted with only the DOS/Win basic system files, essentially the hard drive is empty.

Yet, when I reboot, MANDRAKE IS STILL BOOTING!! Of course, it fails after a few moments, since most of the OS is gone. But DOS/Windows never boots. I figure Mandrake won't let go of the boot sector.

I have created a Red Hat boot disk, but that just jump starts the install, which doesn't get far before failing.

Can anyone help me get rid of Mandrake???

You want to use to remove the boot loader (LILO? or doesn't mandrake use a different one?). I don't see why this would make your RH install fail though. I'd remove those FAT partitions if you don't need them too.

HTH

Jamie...

Thanks Jamie.

Since I didn't have a plain Linux boot floppy, I couldn't use FDISK.

I am re-installing Mandrake, then I'll try FDISK /mbr.

The way Mandrake has taken over this PC, you'd think that Bill Gates developed the distro. ;-)

TBone, Jamie wants you to use your msdos version of fdisk to run the fdisk /mbr command. So, boot up using your Win95 boot floppy and run the command fdisk /mbr to wipe your MBR clean.

Yeap - sorry! The DOS fdisk... thought I'd said that already!

My mistake

Jamie...

Thanks, guys. I figured that out for myself AFTER re-installing Mandrake. I felt pretty stupid, I should have known. So, Mandrake is completely gone now.

But I still can't get Red Hat 6.1 to install:

My PC will not boot from the Red Hat CD, so I create a RH boot disk.

Choosing "expert" mode, I am first prompted to insert a "driver disk." Because I don't have one, I hit cancel.

Next, I select language and keyboard. I am asked whether I want to install from hard disk or "Local CDROM." I select CDROM, and a few minutes later get:

"install exited abnormally -- received signal 11"

I'm at a loss. Mandrake 8.0 boots from the CD fine. Isn't the Mandrake distro based on Red Hat?

My new "production" PC will boot from the Red Hat CD, but not my older "linux" PC.

Could it be my CD drive (Torisan) is incompatible?
May the Red Hat CD (which came with a book) has a problem?

ah... signal 11...

that almost alway means a hardware problem.

http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11/ has some info on signal 11's. hope this helps a bit.

I read through this thread a couple of times and a common thing seems to be the inability to boot from the CD. I ran into this problem while installing in an older machine once. The CD wasn't bootable, the BIOS wouldn't allow the CD to be set as a boot device and all booting had to be done from a floppy. If this is the cse most distro's come with a bootable floppy or instructions onhow to make one. If I missed somthing and your booting from the CD fine then disregard, I've been drinking again.