Hi,

An odd one, I'm sure. I installed a second hard disc in my PC, following instructions. It seemed to go okay.

I then installed Mandrake 8.1 which hasn't gone so well. I want to format the disc, and re-install, but the second hard disc doesn't show up on 'My Computer'. It is there if I check when booting up, though.

Any ideas, anyone?

Cheers,

Blotch

Well, "My Computer" will only show drives formatted using winbloze filesystems, aka Fat, Fat32, MSDOS, NTFS or something I am sure I missed out and someone will throw in

But not linux filesystems. If this drive is partitioned and formatted with linux filesystems, they will still show up in the BIOS, but winbloze simply won't work with em.

Mandrake should have the tools to format this disk and create the necessary partitions though, if that's what you are wanting to do. You just have to start the install process and then diskdrake will be like the 3rd or 4th thing on the list.

Cool

Hi MasterC,

Thanks for your reply. Trouble is I'm unable to even start the Install Process.

When I start the computer and select Linux (on a separate hard disk) I end up with the KDE screen. No matter when I insert my Mandrake cd-rom I can't get off this screen.

There's a Disc icon on screen. I've tried Mount and the cd-rom drive whirrs a lot but nothing happens.

Any ideas, please?


Blotch

It sounds like you don't have your BIOS setup to boot from a CDROM. Check the boot option in the BIOS, make sure CDROM is your first choice.

You shouldn't even get to a boot loader, it should start right into the install if the BIOS is setup properly, and the cdrom is in the drive.

Also, I am not sure what you mean about the Disc icon. That would seem irrelevant, but maybe I am missing something? You've tried Mount? Again, not too sure what you mean by telling me this?



Hope the BIOS is the answer you are lookin for, if not, I'd be glad to help, but could you clarify what you are thinking, or what's the ultimate goal here?

Cool

Hi MasterC,

You're right! My bios was not set to boot from the CD-ROM. So I changed it and this is now what I get:

Boot ATAPI from CD-ROM, and then boot from hard disk. Then I'm given 3 options:
1. start from Windows 98
2. start computer with CD-ROM support
3. start computer without CD-ROM support

When I select no 2, I end up with a black screen screen showing
A:\>, my floppy disk.
So I changed it to D:\ which is my second hard drive, the one I want to format.

However, I don't know what command to enter to start the Install process.

What I want to do is get rid of my Mandrake and start again with Caldera 2.2. I now realise that jumping in with both feet without knowing much about computers was silly so I've bought SAMS TEACH YOURSELF LINUX, which comes with a CD-ROM with the Caldera distribution.

Sorry to be so long-winded.

Thanks for replying.

Blotch

What I want to do

That's not nearly as long winded as some of me and BigJohn's conversations, I think we wrote at least 2 books somewhere on here about a soundcard

Ok, so you can probably just go ahead and stick the Caldera disc into the CDROM drive and boot it up. During the install you should be asked where you want to install it to, and you can at that point just choose your existing Mandrake install. No need to format over the top first. Then, Caldera should go through and format the drive, or at least ask you if you want to. Say yes.

You can also, if you choose, do the formatting/partitioning with the Mandrake install CD.

Plug the cd into your CDROM, and then reboot, this should bring up the Mandrake Logo, and a screen saying Press Enter to continue or F1 for help. Press Enter. Go through the install as if you were going to install, and when you get to the partitioning part, you can choose to reformat the drive. Go ahead and do so. I'd say to use ext3 for the filesystem, but that's just my personal preference.

If you don't get the Mandrake logo up, then I am suspecting that either the information on the Mandrake disc is damaged, or the image may have been burned incorrectly. No worries, you can probably do all this in the Caldera install, I've just never had experience with it so I can't actually be sure.

Good Luck

Cool