why is the computer always stopping the cd drive and the floppy from working?
 

I have installed Red Hat8 on to my lap top and the whole thing has stopped working, the cd rom and the floppy have just stopped. I wiped win98 off and installed red hat8 from a friend who got a new on red hat, but has lost it now, plonker!!

I want to try and learn this OS as I have been using Windows since the 3.1, which is a few years ago. So I gave up on the Lappy and got myself a new pc, and installed the new red hat (9) and the same thing has happened, I am not to sure if it is the hardware or the way I have been installing it, all I know is that I can play the games, and the rest looks so confusing. So i have not played with it.

Do I need to have a windows platform on which to run Linux red hat on, or can the red hat be a stand alone. I am thinking about running them both, so how would i get them both on the disk, as partion magic will not allow me to partion the disk (with red hat only) move than 345.1 mb which windows will not install on.

What a nightmare I am having!!!:scratch:

do you know you have to mount/unmount drives in linux to allow them to function? its deffinitely worth gettin a big book on linux out of the library or something as i didnt hav a clue till i did that.

no need to do that - all the RH manuals are online:

https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/

they are excellent. to access data CDs and floppys, you need to mount them first - the RH manuals explain it step by step. you do not need to mount an audio CD.

and no, you definitely do not need any windoze platforms, or anything related to m$, to run Linux :D

thanks for the information about this thing called mounting, but how do i do it??? what a newbie i am! sorry guys

https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/...ISKS-DISKETTES

https://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/...S-CDROM-MANUAL

aus9 here replying to an off topic question in my bootloader discussion

for password reset read this first
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...password+reset

2) a knoppix cd is really good way of looking at each partition but you appear to be new.
when you have one or downloaded and burnt one....or borrowed etc
load it and click on each partition to see what you have

make notes on what the DEVICE was called for where /boot folder is eg hda1 is a common one
then look for a folder /etc and insert a floppy and click on the floppy to make it WRITEABLE then copy the file inside /etc called FSTAB to floppy and post its output to us.

3) If its a RH server......you are likely to have a linux bootloader. I don t know what that tech used but you can use knoppix to re-insert grub into mbr with terminal commands but we need your /etc/fstab to help

4) and we can amend your /boot/grub/menu.lst to include a timeout for next boot.....you can do this now once you have a knoppix cd
a) navigate to konqueror in root (super user) mode

see my tutorial on the syntax for grub

add a line to the top lines before any title line or lines to say
timeout 30

then reboot the comuter and if grub WAS the bootloader grub will now appear and you can use the EDIT function to add single to the kernel line if you like