one guy i share the flat with uses a rather antique compaq presario 5176. somehow he got a virus or whatever-causes-this onto his windows xp system; starting the computer is an endless process, opening windows explorer takes between 8 and 15 minutes, nothing can really be executed! so i told him i could just install suse linux 9.1 since he is not a gamer and all the elementary things can be done in a safe manner with linux, too.
at first i loaded knoppix since i wanted to arrange the partitions after completely emptying the hard disc. with only 80mb ram (strange constellation) kde could not start, but i found qtparted and ran it. strange enough didn't qtparted find any harddisc!! so i tried to run suse installation from cd. that one couldn't find a hard disc (or just space for a swap-file?) either so i plugged in my 256-mb-usb stick to use as a swap-partition. this one - supposedly situated at /dev/sda1 - couldn't be found either. i checked all available options and found the usb-stick, too, but it didn't say how to load it properly as a swap-partition for starting installation. then i tried to start xp in dos-mode, pressing f8 while starting. it turned out it was no real dos-mode, but i tried to deltree all files when i saw that "format c:" didn't work. well, what was in c:\ did disappear so that when i start the pc now, it doesn't find any keyboard. *nice* so running the suse-disc means my only option is to wait, since "error 304 (no keyboard)" is quite severe... everything i can do now is starting xp and use the mouse; even though it says "new hardware found - keyboard" when running, i cannot use the keyboard (and so i don't get into the task manager either to try to improve performance).
now i used ½ hour just to get into the c:\windows-folder (i wish i was kidding, but i had a watch ticking right beside me) just to find some hundred .exe-files named with only numbers (like "107.exe", "9988776.exe"). i tried to delete some, but performance became even worse when the pc had to do more than just opening a folder. before the keyboard-desaster i saw that in the task manager a lot of programs are listed that seem to be nothing but crap; apart from the number-things a dozen times "svhost.exe" & similar...
i was close to getting a heart attack and throwing the pc out so i just stopped and wrote a note (he's out).

but how shall i proceed from this place? can someone send me autoexec.bat & config.sys so that at least the keyboard may work again? is there any chance of getting a mirror working on this computer? any operating system would be appreciated, i could build in his harddisc into my computer just to make the transfer... unguaREMOVECAPITALLETTERSmsn@gmail.com...

if i cannot get any help from the precious internet community by maybe tuesday i will take his harddisc and empty it with my pc. if that is a rather bad idea, please tell me before i do so...

regards & thanks
ungua, who was only good at win98...

First of all this looks like a windows-problem to me, so
Linux Newbie is not a good place for it, I'll shuffle it to
General ... secondly: it may be urgent to you or your
flat-mate, but please stick with a normal thread title,
and spare us the swear-words, too.


Cheers,
Tink

i apologize.

If what you want to do is to replace windows with linux, and he doesn't need any data from windows, let the installation program reformat and partition the hard drive rather than doing it manually in knoppix. If not, the SuSE install program ( if it's 9.2 or 9.3 can resize the XP partition) You should still back up important information just in case.

You won't be able to delete files in the NTFS drive from knoppix because linux doesn't (normally) have NTFS write support. The NTFS filesystem is a closed propriety file system, with different versions, so write access may not be safe.

If your roommate wants to put XP back on, perhaps re-installing XP by booting from the Installation disk will be your best bet.

ungua - I have just tried to read your post and gave up. Could you edit it and use capital letters, punctuation and paragraphs please.

Believe you me, the longer you leave the post up like that, the more useless answers like this you will get.

@jschiwal, that was one option, yes, but as i said it wasn't working since the program claimed there was no space for swap-files under installation. do you know how to fix this?
but knoppix should at least be able to read ntfs, right? maybe i should format the harddisc to fat32 so that the linux versions can "see" it? there's no data to be saved since he had troubles the last time for two weeks ago when another person formatted everything and installed win xp.

regards
ungua

If that computer only has 80 MB of ram and is running Windows XP, then that is the main reason why everything is taking so long to load.

i would get a slackware live disc(one from which you can run the os), and after i set the bios up to boot from cd(usually hit 'delete' during POST), stay in the command line (no startx) and 'cfdisk dev/hda' at the prompt-a couple of things; see that bios is recognizing the hd properly, and the keyboard thing could be bad if bios isn't picking it up, but then you wouldn't be able to get to bios to start with to set up the boot from cd first.
Knoppix or Suse may do the job as well, i just don't remember if you can start from a command line or they start with a gui-you don't need to waste memory with kde as cfdisk or fdisk will do a better job partitioning. i hope this gets you going in the right direction.
and, yeah, if this box has only 80mb mem then don't load it down with kde or gnome-use fluxbox or xfce(you can put them on the box for particular functionalities, say konqueror- though that's still a load, just don't use them)

Yeah, with 80 MB of RAM, I wouldn't install Knoppix or SuSE (or even KDE... or Gnome). It sounds as if to save the data your best bet may be to physically remove the hard drive and attach it to another (faster and definitely working) computer--then use Knoppix to recover the data.

After that, completely wipe the hard drive clean and install Damn Small Linux or some other distro (with a minimalist desktop--XFCE4, for example) on it.

but he has never seen linux before and he's hardly used to any computer at all. won't it be difficult to adapt an os without a proper ui?
@xavier, i will try to do that with my next post. i hardly talk or write english in everyday-life...

regards
ungua

What does he do with his PC? If it's just web browser and chatting, then install something light as Slack or Debian and once it's done, place two big icons of the Desktop: Firefox and AMSN. He can't miss those icons, regardless of your level of knowledge with computers (mouse skills would be handy though). Flux/Blackbox with Slack or Debian are the way to go too

Fluxbox and slackware/debian would be great on it....

Good luck!

ja, right: msn, skype and surfing are the main things he does, maybe writing a text once in a while. and i saw an icon "dc++", whatever this is. now the question is - will i get through a debian installation, for example...?

regards & thanks for any feedback so far,
ungua

p.s.: i was recommended to find autoexec.bat and config.sys for being able to use the keyboard again at bootdisk.com, so this problem may be solved (haven't tried it yet).

XFCE4 is a proper UI. Haven't you ever seen it? Do a Google search for it and check out some screenshots--or, better yet, download it and try it out yourself.

1. Check the bios settings to see why the hdd and keyboard aren't being recognized.

2. Create a Slack CDROM on your computer (assuming he has a CDROM). If he doesn't have a CDROM, create a Slack boot diskette and root diskettes.

3. Boot the system with the Slack disk(s) and use cfdisk to repartition the hdd.

I would install a light system, either DSL or Slack, with a fairly light window manager for that system. My system currently only has 64MB of RAM and will run KDE but it's a bit sluggish. Fluxbox, WindowMaker, and XFCE4 all run things much quicker.

to 1. => how? cannot enter the bios without working keyboard...!?
to 2. => i ran the computer with dsl 1.5 today, which i really liked (even thought about going from suse to dsl, but there really is no reason). after trying to install, the rebooting failed and the keyboard-problem, which was solved with files from bootdisk.com before, occured again.
to 3. => cfdisk did obviously not find a hdd under dsl either; installation just wiped out xp without making a proper working system...

so the keyboard is still my main problem. a friend told me, error 304 may indicate that the keyboard itself is broken, but i doubt that... any suggestions? shall i maybe flash the bios (where do i det the software?)? never did that, but the bios might be malconfigured, too.

regards
ungua