Hello everybody,

Here's my problem trying to clean install mandrake official 10.1, clean installation, dual boot system with winXP

After booting from CD, the program loads into memory, then make the keyboard selection and go on until I'm asked to insert a root's password. But the keyboard doesn't respond.

To be more detailed it's a TRUST MULTIFUNCTION KEYBOARD, PS/2, greek layout. Same as normal only with 10 keys on top, for web browser, email, calculator etc.

I have had the same problem using the 10.1 community and I think but I'm not 100% sure the 9.2 community (because I'm not sure I was using the same keyboard), while I haven't had that problem with Slackware.

Maybe I have too much stuff on my computer that creates conflicts?

My configuration:

Athlon XP 2500+
QDI K7S746FX MB
1x512MB RAM
1 Maxtor 80GB HD (IDE)
1 Maxtor 80GB HD (SATA)
SATA controller (Silicon Image Sil 3112 Sata RAID controller)
MTEC TV Linx TV tuner
Epson C42 plus printer (USB)
Canon Lide 50 scanner (USB)
Motorola C336 mobile phone (I use it as a GPRS modem, never made it to work under linux, but that's another question to be asked in future)
And:
Trust Multifunction Keyboard (Greek locale)
Optical wheel mouse that can go both on USB or PS/2, I have it connected on PS/2

Cell phone is my only way to connect to the internet that's why I need dual boot, since I don't know how to make it work on linux as a modem.

So anyway, the keyboard doesn't respond during installation and from past experience with mandrake 10.1 community, even if I complete the installation without the keyboard, it still won't work with Mandrake installed.

Any suggestions would be very welcome

Thanks

You didn't say what the keyboard choice is, I set mine to us-standard. And all the charactures work fine.

Are you trying to load a special driver module for it?

Does it come up in the list as the PC is booting.

To find out what driver to use, try a Knoppix live cd. That way you get a chance to see the modules as they're loading.

usually the us standard keyboard works, you may not get all the extra keys working straight away, but you may be able to fix that later.

I use the greek locale (el) but I have also tried the english with same results. I don't use any parameter, I wouldn't know. I haven't thought about trying knopix but I'm affraid this is a mandrake problem, because I haven't had any problems when I tried Slackware. I will check knoppix to see if there is any useful information about my keyboard.
thanks!

And I forgot to mention that the mouse pointer has also a strange behaviour, meaning that it sometimes won't go left or right and when it does move correctly when I move my mouse, it goes really slow, like windows XP running on a pentium with 32 mb RAM while encoding a divx, if you get the idea...

I tried switching from PS/2 to USB for my mouse. Now the mouse pointer runs smoothly (while before would be really slow) but still keyboard is not responding. Isn't there anyone having the same problem? I tried disabling USB support on BIOS but still didn't do anything

I just changed the keyboard and that was it! Didn't change anything else on the system, didn't have to try anything. It seems that Trust Multimedia Keyboard isn't compatible with the Mandrake linux 10.1 official/community and did cause the installation to freeze when choosing partitions. I found a Microsoft natural keyboard and works great (who would tell?). Mandrake even supports the multimedia keys on top.

Impressions about Mandrake 10.1 official: it's great, far more than I have ever hoped, I'm definitely switching from windows, no way back.

And that's why I need a bit of help.

I have files on my NTFS partitions. I want to move them on ext3 partitions, how is this possible?

I have two HDs 80GB each. And for example I have 15GB of mp3s. I created using partition magic a partition ext3 of 30GB and then went to linux to mount it but I can't. How is this done?

On hda I had:
1st partition 65GB NTFS windows system. Divided into 35GB ntfs and 30GB ext3 to mount as /music and transfer there my mp3s (mounted as win_c on mandrake)
2nd partition 15GB (drive letter D:, mounted as win_d)
3rd partition linux swap 400MB

On sda I have the linux installation (all partitions plus swap 500MB) and folders where mp3s and divx are stored.

The idea is to create a partition for /music pass all my mp3s and then delete them from ntfs, create another partition to mount as /movies and pass the divx and so on until I have transfered all my files from windows and stored them in partitions that then I can keep separate from other stuff.

Now the problem was that I did go to mandrake control centre after creating the new partition with partition magic. There it had mounted (without me doing nothing) the new partition as win_d, leaving the original win_d partition of 15GB unmounted.

I unmounted the partition and remounted into /music (30GB) and then mounted the win_d (15GB).

But: /music appears smaller (26GB) with enough space used. I have no permission to write on it and dont know how to change it and win_d appears empty.

Booting back to windows everything seems normal so I know I haven't done anything bad yet.

What should I do?