MandrivaThis Forum is for the discussion of Mandriva (Mandrake) Linux.
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I am having a real tough time installing Mandrake! Here is the system:
Compaq Deskpro EX Series (PIII 733)
Integrated video, lan, network, etc.
Creative 52X cdrom
Maxtor 40GB drive
Now, here is the problem. No matter how I try to install off of the CD, the installation hangs at the moment it is "formatting hda1". It just sits there. The partitions are created, but nothing seems to happen after that.
Any ideas? I have been reading about some issues with Compaq cdroms, but I have tried the original drive with the system and my Creative drive.
Not really too enlightening, but you might try tapping "Num Lock" to see if it's really frozen. If Num Lock responds, I'd be inclined to agree with the previous poster, that it may just be taking a while (Mandrake installation does that some times in places). Also you might try checking the quality of the CD you're using (i.e if it's a cheapo CD-R, you might consider actually getting CDs from the Mandrake Store and support the company).
Another thing which might be useful in finding out what's going on is the virtual consoles (CTRL+ALT+F1..F2, etc.). I recall one has misc. installation messages, and one is a shell you can work with.
Well, finally, I have an error message from the installer: Error formatting ext3 to hda1.
It seems to find the drive, create the partitions, but then fails at the format stage. Not sure why. The drive is new (and I have tried two different drives) and two different CDROMs. I even went and did an install of Windows 2000 to make sure the installer for that worked, and it did. Hmmm....
Maybe EX systems are not for Linux -- although, I have had people tell me on the forums that they do work. RedHat, SuSE, and Mandrake...
If you can, get hold of Knoppix or mandrake move or some other liveCD version and see if it can run on your computer and see your hard drives. If yes, I would try to download the mandrake CDs again (at least CD1).
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