I tried to dual boot Mandrake and XP Home probably 6 months ago and had a terrible experience. It turned out that my XP partition was hidden and couldn't be unhidden. I used partition magic without the rescue disc to do the entire operation which I imagine was the start of my problems. It seemed that Mandrake had installed fine, but when I booted into it, I couldn't get into the GUI, I was stuck at the command line with no way to get out. I eventually had to reformat. I'd like to try this again. I was and am still using a Nvidia Geforce 4 440 Go 64mb video card on my laptop. I read in another post that there has been some trouble booting into the GUI with a Nvidia card. I'd like someone to elaborate on this if possible. Also, is there a preferred tutorial on Dual Booting? I followed one and have seen many others but would like an opinion from some of you on the best one. I'm most likely going to completely reformat the hard drive. Forgive me if this has been asked already, I'm still researching the possibilities.

is that an nvidia geforce4 mx440 64mb?? if it is, well it is very well supported under linux, and you can even use oficial nvidia drivers for it if you want...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/sh...hp?product=681


when you say that you couldn't get into the gui, what exactly do you mean??

did you get some kinda error message??


"the problem was that PM had, by default, hidden my windows partition- set the System ID to 0x17, which is lilo's change-rules is for hidden ntfs. I fixed the problem by using fdisk to change the system ID to 0x07, for normal NTFS"

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...postid=1069579

Yeah, it's an mx440, thanks, good thing it's supported. I downloaded a 3 disc download of mandrake from some college mirror, I can't remember which one exactly. No matter what commands I tried, I was stuck in text mode. I tried editing the config file to no avail. I don't care much about that anymore. I just want to do it right this time. Is anyone aware of a good Dual Booting tutorial? Also, where would be the best place to download a free distribution of Mandrake? I'm not sure, but I might've gotten a corrupt download of Mandrake. Any suggestions are appreciated.

you can make sure your iso's aren't corrupt by checking their md5sum...

here's a good mirror:

ftp://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/d...iso/10.0/i586/

there's three iso files and a text file... the text file contains the md5sums of the isos...

basically, what you do is run the md5sum utility on the iso you download and the result has to match the md5sum on the server... if it doesn't, well then your download is corrupt...

here's a simple md5sum tool for windows:

http://winmd5sum.solidblue.biz/


you can simply check the md5sums of the isos you already have and that way you won't download them again needlessly...

by the way, mandrake's installer has a partition re-sizer which you can use...

as for the dual-boot tutorial, i'm sure you can find lots on google if you search... but really it's not that complicated... go ahead and ask me (and the others on this thread) anything you have doubts about... we'll be more than happy to give you a hand...

Thanks, i appreciate it

Going through tutorials and the like, I realize now that it must've been a year since I tried to do this, so I'm trying to start from the beginning. I found this tutorial that seems to be easy and straight-forward, but was written two years ago. Do you think it'll still work with Mandrake 10 correctly? Is there something you disagree with?

i'm not sure what tutorial you're refering to... could you post a link???

=)


by the way, i'm just wondering... are you totally set on mandrake, or are you willing to try something else??

i'd really recommend Slackware Linux...

if there's anything you wanna know about it just ask, i'll do my best to answer...

you can find the official guide with all the info you need to get started right here:

http://www.slackware.com/book/

=)


of course if you are 100% decided on going the mandrake path, that's cool too...

just show me the link to the mandrake guide you've got and i'll give you my honest opinion...

i'm one of those that started with mandrake but wishes he would have started with slackware...

=)

@ Win32sux -
:-D You want a newbie doing Slack? That it interesting coming from the guy recommending beginners not to compile from source code but use RPM, DEBs or such in another thread...
@ LeftofCool -
There is not much difference to see in the basics regarding dual-booting Mandrake/WinXP since the 9.1 version. It is funny, since I have the same configuration as you, even the card - and I never experienced a hitch... [spoiled bastard] I have heard of the issue with Partition Magic, too, but as I used Mandrake's brilliant tool DiskDrake while installing, it resized my NTFS partition. I recommend this. No problems accessing my 2 NTFS partitions (aka my games box) from Mandrake now. As for tutorials on dual-booting... there is really not much point in that, since - well, okay, here is one:
- Get your 3 Mandrake CD iso's
- Check the MD5 sum to avoid burning coasters, and burn them if OK.
- Pop the first one in, and reboot. Install. Tell it a bit about yourself and choose what you like to be installed.
- Auto-Reboot
-> and now there are 2 scenarios. Either you get a lovely do-you-want-to-do-Linux-or-Windows-today? -menu and can start tinkering, or not. If not, you boot into Windows and can drop by LQ and ask - as you already have.
You see my point? The installation part is rather straightforward for a medium to high experienced PC user. I do not mean to be demeaning or anything, not at all. But with Linux distributions like Mandrake later-on troubleshooting is much more likely to be relevant than during install.
The 2 issues you mention - if you use DiskDrake for partitioning, you may want to prepare yourself. You can find some basics about it here - this is an old page about DD and is mostly useful for illustration of the partitioning screen. All you need to begin with is a system partition signified by / and a swap partition, usually double the size of your RAM. Linux has a stationary one, so the system doesn't have to waste CPU power on permanently working on determining the size of it, like Windows does.
Second: Do you actually use Mandrake now, or do you quit at the prompt? Usually you start up the main window manager by entering startx or, possibly, init 5 on the command line. "Startx" runs the graphic server. It is possible, you start in runlevel 3 without the active graphic server - the "init 5" makes you jump to runlevel 5.
I hope that some (any) of this is useful to you.

why not???

slackware is VERY FRIENDLY... and besides, i believe it's the best binary distro if you really want to LEARN linux...

a lot of "newbies" will not be positively benefited in the long run by mandrake's graphical hand-holding...

"newbie-friendly" doesn't necessarily mean "cute graphical configuration utilities based on qt/gtk" for all newbies...

a lot of newbies can actually dig learning to configure their systems using nothing but a text editor, as is the case with slackware...

and when they learn to configure their slackware system using nothing but a text editor, they'll be able to apply those skills onto any other distro of their choice... that just doesn't happen with the "mandrake control center", sorry...

there's a reason why slackware gets chosen as the LQ distro of the year, trust me:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...5&pagenumber=6

=)


by the way, i'm only recommending slackware... it's not my choice to make, it's LeftofCool's choice, and i'll back-him up with whatever help i can give him no matter what he decides...

Quote:

That it interesting coming from the guy recommending beginners not to compile from source code but use RPM, DEBs or such in another thread...

on that thread, i also mentioned TGZ, slackware's binary package format... REMEMBER???

you don't need to compile anything to use slackware...



LeftofCool, if all this talk about slackware has sparked at least a teeny bit of curiousity on your behalf, stop by the slackware forum, there's lots of good people there eager to help you with any doubts you might have regarding the slackware distro...

you could ask them about the weird conflict of image that slackware has regarding newbies, and why for some people it makes sense to start learning with slackware instead of mandrake or linspire, or someting else... ask them why they love slackware so much... i'm sure you'll get some really informative answers, at the very least...

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...php?forumid=14

you've got nothing to lose...

=)

I appreciate the replies. I do consider myself and medium to high experienced user as far as Windows goes, I'm sure I'm making this process a lot tougher than it really is. Here's the tutorial I forgot to link you guys to, sorry: http://www.devhood.com/tutorials/tut...utorial_id=405 , I'm not totally set on Mandrake at all. The reason I'm interested in Linux is programming, commands and the like, so maybe Slackware is the way to go after all. I do remember trying commands like 'startx' and I remember editing the configuration file, but I never got to the GUI. I guess screwing up the partitioning is my biggest worry and again, I'm sure I'm making it harder than it really is. Thanks.