Slackware 7.1 Newbie - Help
 

I have a slightly older computer IBM Clone. I have the disks for Slackware 7.1 avaliable. I am very much the novice user. Win XP was wiped off the drive and a message appears on the screen as follows: NTLDR is missing - Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart
I have no specific task for the computer. I am looking for a generic installation setup. Afterward, I will be looking to piggyback the connection to a Time-Warner interent connection with another computer using existing XP Pro on a wholly seprate computer. Two computers with entirely different OS's.
I need bonehead simple instructions to setup initally. Can anyone help? I do not know how to acquire hardware data to send to you. The CPU, memory content on motherboard. This is a DELL computer with an oddball outer case that is difficult to open initally. Dell is less than helpful without waving cash in thier faces.


P.S., Afterward I will be looking for an avenue to bypass Google mail entirely as well.

Since you have the Slackware installation disks, I'd google the Dell model number for the key to access the boot menu and select the drive holding the installation disk. That error message looks like your system is trying to boot off the hard disk.

Most Dells I have used access the BIOS/setup with the F2 key. You should see this when you boot the computer initially. Usually at the bottom of the screen it will tell you which key to hit to enter BIOS/setup. If you don't see that, use the suggestion by gilead above to get information so you can set your CD drive to first boot priority.

Slackware 7.1 was first released in June, 2000 so it's pretty old.

I believe that NTLDR is being called from the master boot record of your hard drive. Since Windows XP was removed, NTLDR no longer exists. You will need to write a new master boot record. You should also get rid of any existing NTFS partitions. If you can get your computer to boot from your Slackware CD, run the following command before using fdisk:

This is assuming that your hard drive is /dev/hda. It should be if you are using an older version of Linux and it is the only hard drive on your system.

Unless your computer is very very old, the current Slackware should run on it.

I ran Slackware 12.1 on a IBM PC 300 with 385 MB RAM (one of the original Pentiums). It likely would not run KDE 4.x, but it was okay, if a little slow, with KDE 3.5, and acceptable with Fluxbox. It would not play video, but would play audio. I was using it as a file server, so I didn't care about the GUI all that much--I just wanted the hard drives spinning.

I agree with GVroovman. You need to format the MBR.

Set the BIOS so that the boot from CD option comes before the boot from hard drive option, and you should be able to boot to the Slack install CDs; Slack gives you the option of putting LILO (the LInux boot LOader) on the MBR.

Here's good expanded explanation of how to format the MBR using dd.

http://linuxgazette.net/issue63/okopnik.html

cfdisk 2.9v
 

cfdisk 2.9v
Disk Drive: /dev/hda
Size: 40000000000 bytes
Heads: 255 Sectors per Track: 63 Cylinders: 4863

Name Flags Part Type FS Type [Label] Size (MB)
---
Pri/Log Free Space 32.91
hda2 boot Primary NTFS [^D} 39958.42
Pri/Log Free Space 8.23


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Don't delete older replies yet, they got me this far (Grin)

Hi,

this is looking good. You'll have to delete the existing NTFS-partition which is /def/hda2 afterwards you may create three new paritions (at least) one for the / (root) with about 8GB, another for /home and one for swap. In order to check how much swapspace you'll need, please tell us how much RAM your computer has.

Markus

Edit: in order to delete a partition with cfdisk, move with the curserup/curserdown-keys to the partition and press D