Ok after long fight with different distro's installation
final i get everything set for mandrake and it boots right, but when the boot is loading and i hve this horizontal bar filling up, it freezes at the first 25% of the whole bar

what is this? what is the problem?

no xp nothing, clean install with mandrake 10.1 community on it
on a thinkpad

so here is what
i can go into the filesafe mode and get a dos like command line wich i have no idea how to use

if i chose to log into linux-nonfb
i get stuff loading up but t would freeze at something saying
"start udev"

and that is it. I have tocut the power for me to be able to reboot my system, but because there is no other OS on the computer except for this faulty mandrake, its no use as u see
any idea how to fix this?

Hi,

When the horizontal bar is displayed (during boot) press esc to see kernel messages, is there any error message when the bar freezes ?

when i hit esc
it takes me to the kernal, it loading then it returns back to the horizontal bar and freezes

whatis going on!?
is thisl ike normal?

Hi,

mmmm, no, it's not normal , i think that the problem may be :

1 - a kernel panic

or

2 - a bug in the program that make a graphical boot...

(or both).

I know that mandrake installation lets you create a floppy boot disk, have you got it ? If yes , put the floppy in the drive and make a boot from floppy itself (may be necesary a change in the bios boot menu), then follow the hints.


Let me know if it works.

You may need to specify kernel arguements to get your system to boot safely.

Try this:

At the boot screen where you can choose the kernel version, hit tab.

now you'll see the different boot kernels available in text mode.

e.g. linux vmlinuz etc.

choose one, say linux and type it in with the following parameters

linux nolapic noapm noacpi

If this does not work, producing the same result try these other parameters as well

noagp
noapic
nopcmcia
nousb
etc..

Once you can get it to boot correctly, then try working backwards until you find the offending module.

BTW: In "failsafe" mode your are taken to the console login.

Login as either root or as a valid user.

Then you can type startx at the prompt.