Ok, here's the dealio. I burnt the 3 ISO's for Mandrake v10 Community version.

Installation goes fine but then when I boot, it goes to a bunch of 99's and then nothing else.

I found out that this was a bootloader problem. But after numerous attempts, I still can't fix the problem.

Instead of going on and on on what I did, I'm hoping somone can respond on WHAT I NEED TO DO to get to work. Preferably, I do not want to boot from a floppy. I will not be loading WinXP onto this machine, I want only MANDRAKE.

Here's my configuration of harddrives:

IDE 1 MASTER: Western Digital 1.2GB
SATA 1: Western Digital 36.7 GB Raptor
SATA 2: Western Digital 36.7 GB Raptor

Please reply with detailed (I've never used Linux and have no experience in command lines etc..) instructions on EXACTLY how I should allocate my partitions and under what labels. Then, how and where should I install the bootloader and what is the syntax etc.

When I ask help for partitions, I mean, what are the requirements. Like How much should I put for the "/" partition and under what type LINUX NATIVE or JOURNALISED F3 etc.

Again, please reply with specific instructions as that's the only way (after having tried 8 times) I can get this to work.

Thanks.






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It sounds to me that something was wrong with one of the sections of the lilo.conf file. If there is a error in syntax, or a problem with one of the sections, then lilo will not write information to the mbr, and whatever is there is being executed during boot up.
Another possibility is that the wrong drive is selected to boot up in the bios.
Or perhaps, the root drive is inaccessible during booting. Which is your boot drive.

To find out what the problem is, you need to use the rescue system. Trying to rerun lilo may tell you what kind of problem you are dealing with. In any event, you will need to give us the contents of /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf before we can really help you. Also it would be good to know if your drive are accessible (particularily the sata drives).

Boot up with the first install disk and enter the option 'rescue'. This will get you into the rescue system. From there, there will be a menu option to load in all device modules. This might be a good idea. The root directory will be located on /mnt. You can use the chroot command to make it the new root. chroot /mnt. Now it might be a good idea to set up your paths by starting a login bash shell. bash -l.

Now that the system disk hierarchy is set up, cd to the /etc directory and take a look at the /etc/lilo.conf file. cd /etc; less lilo.conf
There may be different options available. You said that this computer will not have Windows XP on it. If there is a windows section near the bottom, delete the windows section. (note: before chrooting, the editor available was vim-minimal)
Try executing /sbin/lilo. Lilo will print out each section it is working on. It will bark at you if there is a problem. If there is a section, that access a drive lets say for example, that errors out, then you need to fix the problem. Another option, if the section is not needed you can # comment out the lines in that section, execute [/b]/sbin/lilo[b] again and pray! Once lilo successfully updates your loader, you can try booting normally.

Great, I'll try that but what I've done in the mean time is put on Mandrake Official on download--just in case I got a bad download.

You mentioned something about boot priority--I have been messing around with this time to time. What is the suggested priority I use?

Also, what do you mean by "set up" my paths? Don't I create the partitions during setup? And if I do have to set up my paths, what do I do once I enter the Bash shell?

Thanks again