If you have a burner then yeah. I'm partial to burning any iso's as opposed to a disk install since there is alot more room for any type of error etc...It's worth a shot. You may find that there was just something wrong with the hd install img.

Okay, I'll go for it. Think I'll redownload the ISOs from the Red Hat site, even if it is slower than hell -- I got them from a mirror site for the first try.

Hope this works.

paook

Ah. Well, burnt the CDs and things went fine. The install looks like it's okay.

But I can't get my GUI to load (I installed both KDE and Gnome, with KDE as default). When I boot Linux it loads all the components and everything, then ends with a failure to load wine and prompts for a login. As I haven't learned very many commands yet, I don't really have any idea what to do after I login to look at the problem.

Anyone want to walk me through it?

paook

If you are logging into the console prompt, when the computer boots up, look through the inits as they start and when you see "Entering Runlevel X..." Where X is 1-5, note the number, probably 3. Also look for the error messages that wine is giving and if the runlevel is 5 and you aren't getting a graphical login, then it's causing a boot problem. Login as root and do this;

pico /etc/inittab
scroll down to where it says: # Default runlevel.
id:3:initdefault
change the 3 to a 5
type control O then control X
reboot and you should log straight into the GUI login.

From there you can go in as root real quick (even though a no no) and go to the "K" menu -> System -> SysV Init editor
go to runlevel 5 startup services and remove wine if you do not need to run windows programs in Linux. It don't work all that well anyhow.

Okay, some details.

I tried startx and it crapped out on me just like it does when I boot Linux. Now that I recall, when I set up my monitor and everything in the install, it flashed a black screen at me instead of displaying correctly. So guess I'll have to set it up now.

I tried running Xconfigurator and entered everything I could. However, I'm on a notebook so I really don't know what monitor to select. In Windows it's just labeled as Digital Flat Planel. The resolution I use in Windows is 1024x768@60Hz, but I have no idea what the vertical refresh rate is. Video card's an S3 Graphics Savage/IX with 16Mb of vmem.

So I configure all that as well as I can in Xconfigurator and it still kicks on me when it goes to test everything. I also tried using xf86config, but that worked less well since it made me configure even more stuff manually. It also wasn't able to write the config file at the end of the process, for whatever reason.

So anyone interested in helping me out? I can barely navigate my way around Linux, much less configure everything on my own.

paook

Okay, was posting my message when you posted yours.

Don't really need xwindows anyway, so I'll try that. Probably will work, since I believe it flashes wine [OK] as level 5 before switching to three when it boots.

Off to try it -- be back soon.

paook

Uh. No worka.

It was already in runlevel 5. Here's what it does:

1. Boots in runlevel 5, goes through all the boot checks, which are all okay, including wine.
2. Tries to boot the GUI, screen flashes, goes back to command prompt.
3. Waits a while, at which point I can login, otherwise it switches to runlevel 3 and proceeds to give me the error with wine I described earlier.

So that brings me back to thinking it's a problem with my monitor or video card as configured. Look like that?

paook

Even though my laptop experience is quite limited, it almost for sure sounds like a graphics config problem. It may be a trial & error process to get the refresh rates right and so forth. Run xf86config or Xconfigurator and you could try a generic monitor with low settings and see if it goes in under a sort of safe-mode per config. Leave the res. and sorts real low so it can't kick you out for not being able to display 24 bit mode etc...Got the idear? You'll probably end up getting it after a few different configs. Just keep trying them...

Umm, I think I may know what the problem is ... let me go check and I'll see if I'm really that stupid. ...

paook

Well, good news is I'm not as dumb as I thought I might be. Bad news is I still can't get it to work.

I fiddled with about every setting in Xconfigurator and didn't get anything to work, even the ridiculously low settings. My screen should be able to use a pretty standard setting, as in Windows it's nothing special there. I think it's a general laptop issue, as I believe TFT laptop screen connect to the rest of the computer differently than in a desktop.

I'll trying checking around some laptop sites and see what I find. Otherwise I may just reinstall using the pre-set laptop config. (I did a custom install because the pre-set one would have screwed up the partitions I wanted.)

paook