Hi,

I am trying to install Mandriva on a laptop with a SATA drive. I am trying to install from a live-cd and nothing happens when I click on the icon to install. When the script associated with the install link is executed in the terminal it gives the following error message:

'An error occurred: no valid devices were found on which to create new filesystems, please check your hardware for the cause of this problem at /usr/lib/libDrakX/fs/any.pm at line 17'

Setting the option acpi = off makes it freeze entirely. The laptop has a VIA controller.
I would appreciate any help with this.

Thanks

This can be interpreted as not having any free space on the drive, meaning the drive is completely partitioned. I've never installed from Live CD, but maybe you have to use Windows Vista's disk management to shrink it's partition and create free space (If Vista is installed), or download and use Gparted to do same.
Also, if there is the option to add a kernel parameter (usually is) at a boot prompt, try "linux all_generic_ide" without the quotes to try and have the installer use a IDE driver instead of SCSI if it appears to be an SCSI problem. But something tells me it's because there is no free space, you may also be able to prepare the drive with utilities on the disk while running in Live mode, like parted.

I believe Sephiroth may be on the right track...
My dad said this had something to do with the CD looking for free space on the drive.

Wouldn't this destroy data on those partitions?

Most installers would be able to do the resizing to accommodate the new installation, so I'm not sure what's what. But resizing Linux partitions with Gparted works well and does not destroy data, it should be able to figure out the limits of the minimum size. You can share the swap also, just need one partition for root which will also contain /home, if there is enough room, you can also create two new partitions and have /home on it's own partition. You can share the existing /home partition if there is one also, best not to use the same user name though, otherwise you may not be able to boot one of them into the user's account.

Sounds good. :-)

[Sorry for the extra post. Hit the wrong button.]

The laptop in question is mine.. that's my partner who did the OP.. There is 15gig of space already partioned for Linux. I partioned it in Vista before I installed Linux.

Would the fact Ubuntu is already installed on the linux partion cause a problem? Would Mandriva not just replace it?

It depends on the installer's features, some do ask if you want to replace Linux partitions with the new installation, not sure if Mandriva gives you that option as I only installed it once a while back. You can always start an installation and see what's available in the partitioning stage, changes are not applied till you accept them at the end of the partitioning stage in most cases. Because the installer is usually just loaded in ram memory at this stage, it's not a big deal to just power down the computer to avoid going further.
I can't see it being a problem, you should be able to install over Ubuntu's partitions.

Well that's what I figured. But the original post is still the problem. I can't get as far as installing it!

I can only believe it's the lack of SATA support because there's a linux formatted partition, but Mandriva just doesn't see the HD, or the DVD/CD drive either, which are both SATA.

How annoying

Well, I have SATA hard drive. It's probably the integrated SATA controller that the installer's kernel does not support/recognize. If you think it's the SATA issue, you can try kernel parameters to have it use IDE drivers to do the installation, last I heard the "all_generic_ide" option works for Fedora, might want to give that a shot. I'm pretty sure I've seen a web page somewhere in Mandriva wiki or similar with a list of kernel install options in the past if it does not do the trick.