I tried Slackware... Could never get it to install.. So tried Mandrake.. and it just Exits with an error and does not even try to install.. This is just way to much effort, more than i wanted. Thank you all for the time you have spent trying to help me get this to work

Dude....stick around.

Did you give up this quickly with Windows? How long did it take you to get good with Windows stuff.

If you give up this easily, I don't think you'll get a whole lot of anything done

Let us help you. It's all good! At some point or another we've all felt like giving up too. We just stuck it out. I bet you'll be a happy camper if you get it installed. I bet Redhat 9 or Fedora would install nicely on your setup.

Peace,
Whitehat

I would love to.. but i have just spent to much time.. and i refuse to use redhat.. they just give me a bad feeling... it feels like a different Microcrap
Slackware installs, will no run.. Mandrake will not even install.. I just get an error when it is trying to inialize

Also.. I think part of it is because how well i know windows. I can fix any problem in windows, We have even learned how to rebuild windows Kernals... Even though Microsoft says it cant be done.. My Boss and i have done it. I just have been trying for 5 or so days.. and am completly frustrated at it.. Nothing i do seems to help. I understand the basics. how to use the utilities, but the errors are forign to me.. so i have no chance of repairing it.. and it makes me feel Stupid and useless

Dude......

No matter. Just take a break and come back. You don't have to learn everything in 5 days

We'll be here for ya.

Peace,
Whitehat

Ok, one more try...

Here is mandrake error:

Error in exec of stage2 :-(
trying to exicute '/usr/bin/runinstall2' from the installatio voloume,
the following fatal error occurred
FATAL ERROR IN STAGE!: I/O Error

I can't recover from there error
you may reboot your system

i feel for you bro it took me all day sunday to make mandrake install all the way it kept giving me error after error. all kinds of them too.

one of the big ones is unplug every usb device you have except the mouse and keyboard. my usb dual force rumble pad was causing linux to crash everytime. unplug it and boom there she goes.
i was also getting error after error when trying to install Lilo or grub it wouldnt install to the MBR so therefore wouldnt boot at all. lilo and grub came up but thats all.
finally after messing around with the partitions i finally got LILO to say "install LILO on HDA MBR" once it installed lilo to the mbr mandrake booted right up.

i have nOT been able to get slackware to install at all. i can get to the cfdisk screen and make my partitions but thats all,, it dont give me an option to install or anyhting., im missing some command or something i just cant find it. i told cfdisk to exit and thats all she did it went back to the bash prompt. i said boot linux and the install ran and wanted me to run cfdisk again. ggrrr so i went back to mandrake.

i think the madrake installer has some sERIOUS issues. so try another version dont be afraid of red hat,.. i dont think its going to be any harder to use than mandrake but i might be wrong.

also dont forget if you installed linux on a different hard drive then you need to go into your bios and change your boot device priority to make the bios boot to the linux hard drive.

ill be the first to tell you your not going to be happy if and when you do get linux runnig it in no way shape or form is user friendly but htey are making it better mandrake 9.2 is nice they made changes i am glad they made. but still we windows users are way out of our league and will be totally lost when we try linux. its slower, requires you to log in as root for many things, or requires you to use the root password for many things. and i hope you know how to use a dos prompt and cuz youll be doing that alot in linux.. running commands right froma "dos" environment. or window. sorry its not dos in linux , i forget the name.

I can get Slackware to install.. and it would run, but i installed it onto a second petition on my hard drive, the main partition was an established Windows NTFS partition, and i have not been able to get the bootloader to install so i get a choice of what to load, windows or linux... i was homing mandrake would work.. but that gets about 30seconds into the install CD and just exits..

Error in exec of stage2 :-(
trying to exicute '/usr/bin/runinstall2' from the installatio voloume,
the following fatal error occurred
FATAL ERROR IN STAGE!: I/O Error

I can't recover from there error
you may reboot your system



thats wierd i was getting almost the same error.
try reburning the cd or redownloading the iso someone correct me here almost looks like it cant read the cdrom properly. like its a bad burn or bad iso it burned.

on a side note go grab yourself the MandrakeMove cd and burn it,, its mandrke 9.2 that runs from a cd,, that will give you a good shot at what to expect. it runs great on my rig and pretty much runs from every system i have seen.

its limited but fun to play with so you can atleast get an idea of mandrake 9.2 its wortht he download. and installs nothing ony our harddrive, it runs from the cdrom, its a little slow cuz of this but still worth a try

that error looks like more a bad download, make a md5sum to the file...

I have sucefully installed Mandrake 9.1 and 9.2, on my rig... it has wireless keyboard and mouse and they worked with out problems at the first time...

If you decide still to throw the towel.. relax a bit some days..... and try it back....

OK its not on your harddisk but why not try running knoppix (www.knoppix.org), its an entire linux OS on abootable CD and it runs from the CD and will do everything that a harddisked installed OS will do (well almost). It has a good hardware detection system and will let you test all your hardware before you commit to an install. I also beleive that there is an option to install the entire disk to your harddisk although I have never tried.

Tim

I had the same problem with Slackware 9.1 running from a second drive with win2k NTFS on my first drive. LILO would not load and learning to configure Grub to dual boot was like translating Shakespeare into Sanskrit.

Anyway, I highly recommend Fedora Core 1 as it loads easier than a windows install. It's the bastard child of Redhat but I love it nonetheless.

I felt the same way yesterday when I was looking at a blank screen with a blinking cursor. The computer would not even turn off with the power down button. The boot disk with all those numbers. WTF.........I powered it off with the pigtail switch and reloaded both OS's. It's true I don't know what I did to get there in the first place but it was a tremendous learning experience getting it all back. A "yeah baby!" for sure. So I decided to keep trying. I read somewhere on this forum the learning curve is a couple of years. I was also told that the LG cdrom is not compatible with Linux. I'd just try to take a break for a day or two, then try again.

You had a bad download or burn.
Remember to burn at the slowest speed you can. This makes a far better burn. No matter what anyone says this is true.
Turn OFF all plug and play options in the bios. Windows doesn't need them either and they really screww up a linux install.
As above make sure everything you can is unplugged. USB gives the most trouble to linux. The USb people just won't give linux a hand in writing correct some what universal drivers.
Make sure the machines drives are correctly jumpered to master/slave and not cable select. Cable select is the cheap and easy Dell way of doing things.
Make sure the machine is not overclocked. And the memory chips are good. Bad chips tent to give intermitent various errors.

Post back any errors you get as soon as you can. I think your next Mandrake install will go great.