I have a weird problem that noone seems to be able to help me out with
I really want to start getting to know Linux in it's different distros but my pc won't let me

The PC:
Make: HP Pavillion a414x
OS: WinXP Pro SP2
CPU: Intel Celeron 2.6 Ghz default setting (not overclocked or anything)
HDD : Maxtor 200 GB , Seagate 80 GB
RAM: 1024 MB
MB: It's an HP Bios as it comes standard with their pc's i dunno which make though (Still googling for it)

The Maxtor 200 GB is partitioned :
C:\ 102 GB
E:\ 87.7 GB

also have drive D:\
That's the 80 GB Seagate

All partitions are NTFS

GFX: ATI Radeon 9200 SEC 128 MB
AUDIO: AC' 97 Audio codec (onboard sound card)
Motherboard: Still trying to find out
It's the standard
Distro i'm trying to install on drive D:\
Mandriva-Linux-Free-2006

Problem Description:
I insert the disc... it boots fine
Splash screen appears

I hit enter to start installation
Progress bar starts loading and at 75% the pc reboots on it's own and repeats above process

I have tried various distros such as knoppix,gentoo,fedora core, mandrake 10.1 and mandrake 10.0 community

Every installation does as it's described above

Could someone please help me with this so i can get
a decent distro on my pc?

Many thanks in advance

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/g...#c00058048_doc

All of my Motherboard specifics are in there

Raul M: This seems to be a problem with the Linux itself as the problem is only with this. So, I suggest that you contact the Vendor for further assistance.

Now Raul M: is a lad from the HP Helpdesk and says it's Linux itself

I'm at a loss now

Dunno if this is any help
Here is the bootloader for windows

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect


Dunno if anything else is needed

Anyone at all?

With 56 views and not 1 reply
I'll give up on this pc for now

cheers anyways

I have a suggestion. IF your running windows on the same machine and its already installed then look at your hard drive partitions, and your boot table. It seems to be a a major failure for it to reboot without reporting errors.

ye si am running windows
The bootloader is posted
Dunno on how to look at the "table"

Well i am currently posting this from Suse LiveCD
I took out my graphics card and rebooted my system
And all of the sudden it worked

Will now try and burn the rest of mandriva

cheers

that didn't work
The funny thing is
only the livecd of suse has worked..
it has to be booted in safe mode though

I finally installed Mandriva

My bootoption were
Boot: alt1 ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off

Now i can't boot into it
It does show up though
Asks me which OS i want to load

Mikey I am trying to follow your post, are you trying to do a triple boot, as in having 3 operatings systems boot of the same machine?

d-1

Linux likes its own partition, the table I refered to is important because window doesn't want to share the boot loader with another OS. I sugest you find a tutorial (on this website) for your particaular linux (slackware, suse, Fedora, etc) and follow the "Dualboot" instructions You have to prepare you system for dual booting unless you just want to boot from a CD into linux. Installing is a different story, It is a problem with linux, and windows.

Okay
Right now i have Mandriva installed
in ordet to get it installed i used ide=nodma apm=off and acpi=off

I never got it to install before so that right there was progress on it's own...

At least we know it's there now

Now when i reboot my pc i get prompted

My choices are :
Linux
Failsafe
Windows XP

When i select linux the pc reboots and starts again prompting me
Winblows works fine though
The installation is there
I can't see the linux partition from windows

Hmmm. My first thought is possibly a bad download of Mdv2006-free, or a bad disc. If you *did* verify the MD5sum of the iso(s), and you are sure the disc is good....

Perhaps you can boot the Suse Live-CD, and look at the lilo.conf file on the Seagate drive. I assume Suse will mount it read-only, at least. It will be under the "etc" directory under the Mandriva root partition (hdb1, I am guessing). So if Suse auto-mounts it, it would be someplace like "/mnt/hdb1/etc/lilo.conf". Posting that would help us see what the bootloader *thinks* it should be doing when you choose "Linux" from it.