My window 7 has gone? I'm informed that Mandrake hasn't been used for years. That's how long ago that I made the purchase. I have no idea if I'm using an old Linux OS? My OLE 2 compound documents won't open. Email and searches work fine,I think I'll like Linux but I'm sure stumbling right now.

Yes Mandrake was a very good distro that I used for a long time - it is now very old and should not be used on newer hardware (I still run a few Mandrake 7.2 machines, Pentium 120mhz!).

Mandrake became Mandriva after a merge with Connectiva, and is now represented by the very capable Mageia Project distro. I have not used Mageia but it has a solid reputation among former Mandrake/Mandriva users.

If it was a Windows 7 machine then almost any current distro should work on it.

Please post a few system specs (CPU, RAM, HD, Network and video adapter chipsets) and I am sure you will receive more help than you probably need to select and sort out installing a newer distro!

I am a Slackware user and highly recommend it to everyone, others will have other preferences!

Welcome to GNU/Linux and welcome to LQ!

If your computer came with windows pre-installed you can reinstall it using the original windows key.
If you have live-cd post output of

The easiest way to find out if you still have a windows partition is to open a terminal in Mandrake and log in as the root user and run the following command: fdisk -l(Lower Case Letter L in the command). You can post the output here for advice. Which Mandrake are you using? In a terminal, you can run this command which should tell you: cat /etc/issue or if that doesn't work, cat /etc/release.

Mandrake has been out of development for many years and probably won't do well on newer hardware.
What specific problems are you having?

Thanks for the info, I really appreciate your help. I'm using a HP 4720s laptop with pre-installed win 7 Pro. I contacted HP and they sent me 3 CD's. I did the download on all 3 --- still can't see the win 7 OS. I'm 83 but believe me, I'm a newbie. Please Explain Distro,I don't want to assume. Thanks again --- Ollie

I'll look at this tomorrow, I'm missing happy hour, It's Miller time. Take care, Ollie

Distro: Short way of referring to a "GNU/Linux distribution". For example Mandrake was the name of that particular "distro", as is Slackware, Debian, OpenSuSe, etc. Similar to "brand name", but because most of these are FREE as in Freedom and as in cost, community driven projects, "brand" is not appropriate - hence "distro".

At 83 you are in somewhat exclusive good company, but by no means alone! A recent age poll among Slackware users included several in your range, but you won't be the oldest! I am in the 60-70 group, but not for long...