The fun of being a newbie... (help needed)

abethepunk · 07-20-2003, 05:14 PM

I have recently purchased Mandrake Linux 9.1. Yesterday, I installed it on my old hard drive (its pretty new, just from my 'old' computer), and everything was working OK, I was just trying to get my modem figured out...

So today, I come on windows, do my thing, and I decide to uninstall the dual booting software because I didnt need it (I was using lilo, I think thats what its called anyway...). I restarted, and I came to a black screen w/ a blinking cursor at the top, kinda like a prompt but I couldnt type or anything.

I took my Linux hard drive out of there & now everything is peachy in windows, but I don't know what happened! It simply wont work

Does anyone have any suggestions? Does this happen to other people? I'm so lost in this new world...

Any help is greatly appreciated

lfur · 07-20-2003, 05:16 PM

Removed lilo ... are you running win and Linux on 2 seperate machines??

abethepunk · 07-20-2003, 05:20 PM

I didnt remove lilo, its a program called "osl boot manager". I thought I would need it so I could choose what I wanted to boot, but I didnt so I uninstalled it. I don't know if thats the problem or not, but all this happened after I restarted after I uninstalled.

I'm running both(well, was) linux & windows on this machine, on two separate hard drives.

Sorry for the confusion, I'm not that great at explaining things sometimes.

lfur · 07-20-2003, 05:29 PM

I f you're runnign 2 os's on one machine you MUST have a boot loader.
I suggest Lilo http://freshmeat.net/projects/lilo/?topic_id=139

Enjoy

abethepunk · 07-20-2003, 05:58 PM

I should have lilo on my machine. I installed OSL Boot Manager on my hard drive #1 on windows before I installed Linux, because I didnt know that Linux had Lilo. I never used OSL because Lilo took care of things, so I uninstalled OSL today, then my computer wouldnt boot anything (wouldnt go to lilo, windows, or linux, just a blank screen).

Ive taken my Linux hard drive out, and my computer is now working. I'm so confused

Proud · 07-20-2003, 06:05 PM

How exactly would you pick an OS before you'd removed OSL? Via only lilo?

Put the linux drive in again. Boot off the first Mdk cd and enter the rescue mode. There should be an option to restore lilo in the MBR.

Skyline · 07-20-2003, 06:06 PM

The best way to dual boot Windows and a Linux distribution on 2 hard drives is to use LILO or GRUB not a propriatry bootloader.

LILO is good and sufficient.

Install Windows 1st - then Linux 2nd - install LILO to the MBR.

BTW that blinking cursor might have been a LILO error message consisting of just L or LI ?

abethepunk · 07-21-2003, 05:46 PM

Ok I have reinstalled Lilo

Thank you for the help!

But NOW it wont load KDE... After the Mandrake loading screen, it went to the black screen where you type in commands & such (like Kommand in KDE). It asked for my username & password, I typed them in & it told me that it was INVALID... I'm not understanding this... My username was abethepunk, and the last time I was on KDE I changed it to abe. So after my username and/or password was denied, I typed in KDE, and to my suprise it started to bring it up

I then received this error message:

"The following installation problem was detected while trying to start KDE:

$Home directory (/home/abe) does not exist.

KDE is unable to start"

I tired making the directory "abe" but it wouldnt let me.

Should I just reinstall Linux alltogether??? I don't have any personal files on it yet, it seems like the easier route but if I can fix this 'on my own' I would like to.

Proud · 07-21-2003, 05:51 PM

It seems when you changed your name you also changed your home directory. Try logging in as root, then startx and then remove your old user and then add your new one.

abethepunk · 07-21-2003, 05:55 PM

Thats what I was thinking... I tired to sign in as root, but it wouldnt let me do that either, unless I did it wrong which is completely possible

Do you just put 'root' as the username & then the password? Or is that where you type "su", I'm trying to learn this on my own & now I'm getting everything all confused & mixed up.

DrOzz · 07-21-2003, 06:01 PM

yes you type root as the username and then the password...
when your at a prompt as a regular user then you can type su - and then the password.

abethepunk · 07-21-2003, 06:05 PM

Humph... Thank you so much! I tried that though, but it also came up as 'invalid'. I only used 1 password for my user & the root accounts, so I dont know whats going on. I'm about ready to just reinstall it.