Well where can I start , let me begin by say hello to you all , with what I have seen it seems to be a thriving and helpful community , and I hope I am not going to be too much of a nuiscance these forth coming days.

In a bid to eventually run my own website etc etc , I have taking the decision to get to know and install Mandriva V10 Linux , in addition to my windows XP OS. This I am hoping in addition to showing me the benfits of Linux , educating myself , hopefully will help prepare my website material prior to selecting somewhere to host the site. I have been informed a Linux based server is the best route to pursue and this my main reason at present to get my finger out and make a start.

With the exception of a brief knoppix ( boot from cd ) scenario my knowledge as far as Linux is concerned is zero , and I hope that you guys can remedy that for me.

I shall begin with my first problem.

I have made a partition on one of my hardrives using partition magic m taking the Linux ext 2 option , created a partition for the swap file and all seems to be ok.

This partition is on one of my spare hard drives, ( not the master one that has the XP installation on it ) , anyway rebooting the system the Mandriva Install screen does appear , but for some strange reason when i click on enter to install the screen goes black and nothing seems to happen.

What am I doing wrong ? Is it maybe due that this partiton is not on my master hard drive. I have tried to change bios but not showing the drive in question , it is a sata drive , although the master hard drive I use for my XP OS is IDE and is visable from the bios , and easy to select as bootable drive. ( satas were purchased for storage only , and choice as no space for another ide drive )

Should I wipe my master IDE HD clean , split that drive with a partition for XP and a partition for Linux and the swap File ?.

Is it maybe the partitioning that Partition Magic has done is not the way to go , It should have been via fdisk.exe ?

Any help and comments would be appreciated. TIA

Lets see - installing to a secondary or slave drive is no problem and often a favorite for people who don't want to mess with their windows. Repartitioning with partition magic is similarily the normal thing to do where you want to dual boot with ntfs in the other "slot".

Your problem seems to lie with the install disk.

Usually, if you boot from the install disk, it dosn't matter what your current partitions are. This is because the installer runs in RAM and will check out the drives for the partitioning sceme. If it thinks there is no space, it will tell you and ask if you want to make some

A very common thing, would be to use fdisk to wipe the spare drive - no file system at all. Windows won't recognise this drive but I bet the installer will find it. Then it will be recognised as 100% free space and theinstaller will add partitions as needed. usually.

So - we need to know what the computer is that you want to do the installation on - include CPU, CPU clock and RAM and monitor.

Some machines require extra things to be done to get the installation going.

Bear in mind, that you may end up being advised to try a more newbie freindly distro like a Red Hat offering or SuSE or something. It may even turn out that your install disk is corrupt - did you test it? But it is more likely that you need to pass some kernel parameters to the installer - especially if you want to install on a laptop.

BTW: you asked for advise.
The main bit of advise is in how to post questions. You got lucky this time: I was deliberately looking for newbies with poorly phrased questions to give a hand to

You're question concerned installing mandrivia ... so it should really have gone into the linux distributions: mandrivia forum. Not Linux Software - since this is not a programming question.

You're title should be a summary of your question: in this case, something like -

"Blank screen initiating mandrivia install."

In the body, your question should come first, with details about your system and anything you've tried to solve the problem yourself. The more you try things out yourself - even if you totally mess up - the more respect you get and the better the replies will be.

For eg. If you search the distro forums for mandrivia install issues you may even find the fix you want without posting at all

More social things are not unwelcome, but are best kept to the end. Many of us are doing other things and want to assess quickly if yours is a message we should be responding to. It's sort of rough going to have to plough through the social chit-chat just to find out if we can help.

Don't worry - everyone does this first time.

What you describe is definitely not normal, but even the worst installers I've encountered will tell you if there is a problem, not just go black, and Mandrake is one of the better ones in my experience.

Try using Partition magic to remove all the partitioning apart from your windows part, then let Mandrake do its own thing on the partitions., it sounds to me however like you aren't getting even as far as checking the partitions.

When you say black, do you mean off? Is your monitor losing its signal, i.e. does the power led go yellow or flash? If so the install program may be trying to run your monitor at a resolution or refresh rate it can't support. Do you have a really old monitor?

If it stays on but just goes black then the installer is probably hanging or crashing. you may have an issue with the CD you are booting from, or possibly the cd/dvd drive. Check your memory is ok. Do you have an odd graphics card?

Persevere with it, its worth it!

Just out of curiosity - since you say you've used Knoppix, can that distro recognize the drive? Since it isn't formatted I wouldn't expect a successful mount, but at least for the drive to be seen.

However, like the others, I'd say wipe the drive. Let Mandrake format it. That is exactly my setup - though I haven't downgraded from Win2K to WinXP.

I have 2K on one drive (being used less and less) and Linux on the other drive. I have a very large FAT32 partition on the second drive which is seen by both OS's. I did exactly what was mentioned above. I had Mandrake (then 10.0) format the second drive and installed it there. I eventually moved over to SuSE due to hardware issues with Manrake X but kept the partition intact for SuSE to format.

the action itself happens immediately following clicking install , I think the way to proceed and the common response will be to wipe the hard drive clean, I will give this a try and revert back with the results.

meantime as requested Machine Spec also is

Asus k8v
2 GB Corsair Hi Spec Ram PC3700
Logix 17" Monitor
Athlon 64 bit XP3400 + running at 2502 mhz
Audigy 2 z Platinum Soundcard
Nvidia Geforce4 Ti 4800 SE 128 mb
Maxtor 300GB ata133
Maxtor 120GB sata150 x 2
Lacie 200GB USB2 External
Pioneer 107D + Pioneer 108 DVDr Drives

off topic ....

Simon apologies for the initial post your comments having been duly noted. Linux at the moment is very vague words link distro etc etc are new , I thought OS , software , is why I posted , apologies ..

I've heard of the black screen but never seen it.
Is the distro intended for the sata drive? (I think there's something special when installing to sata... though I don't remember anything about mandrake/ivia.)

I take it you've checked obvious stuff like the installation is a 64 bit install rather than a (default) 32 bit?

Anyway - first I'd like to check your disks.
Most installers have a command line to pass parameters to the install kernel. When you see the "install" prompt, can you type in it?

If so: try typing "mediacheck" before pressing enter.

(Oh dear - I may be in the wrong distro here ... I've had a look for kernel boot commands in mandrivia with no luck. A mandrake fella may help out or you can ask the home web page here... or try these, you never know)

Anyway - the idea is to check the media in case it's corrupted. Probably not, but it's worth a go.

Media OK - the try again with your screen set to a low low resolution by typing: lowres then enter.

If power has been going off to the monitor (you monitor actualy switches off!) try disabling the advanced power stuff...

acpi=off noapic skipddc

does the k8v have a built in graphix card (or can you replace the nVidia card - there are issues with these cards, it may be that the installer simply cannot write to the card!)

I think I have absolutely dropped a serious bobo following your mentioning " I take it you've checked obvious stuff like the installation is a 64 bit install rather than a (default) 32 bit? " . It is 32 bit version , I was under the opinion it wouldnt have mattered a bit like 32 bit XP running OK.

If this not to be the case then this might just be the problem.

It shouldn't be too much of a problem - it's just that you'll be running your wonderful, ultra-cool 64 bit machine in as a 32 bit machine.

However: that depends on how the installer is set up. For eg. I have a RHFC2 install DVD - apparently a 64 bit install is possible from this as well as 32 bit (it checks for the CPU etc before running anaconda or something) though I havn't tried it.

I can imagine that someone may set up an installation to assume 32 bit only and thus ... for eg. I'm pretty sure 32 bit rpms won't install on a 64 bit system and if the install uses rpms then you cannot install either.

You may want to check this out personally - and use an explicit 64 bit install.