OK, first off, I'm a total Linux Newbie, so please excuse the ignorance I also searched on this forum for mention of this problem, but foud nothing. If this has already been answered, plz post a link to the thread.

DL'ed Mandrake distro (considered this the most suitable because of it's reputation for a friendly install, which it was).

Managed to get some free space (about 13Gb) on my WinXP primary partition (lot of junk on there).

Mandrake install boots fine, and the luvverly install screens come up ok. I didn't notice any warnings or errors on the initial boot screens (tho if anyone can give me any hints what to look for, I can check again).

After the licence step, an error screen appears:

I click on OK and carry on, the install completes with no further problems (apart from a dodgy disk 3 which takes some persuading).

On reboot, the bootloader works fine, Linux starts working through its list, but hangs stone cold on the "Finding Module Dependencies" step.

If anyone has any clues on this, I'd be grateful.


While I'm here, I've got another little problem: network card identification. My motherboard has two nic sockets, and I've added another two (I had them lying around and Windows didn't seem to like the motherboard ones). My PC acts as the Internet Gateway for the home network (yeah, bad thing, I know, but the GF has a bad habit of just turning hers off, and a third PC wasn't an option), so I have two active network connections (one to cable modem, one to hub) on four nics. Mandrake only seems to provide the driver name for the nc's and asks you to pick which one connects to where...how do I work out which nic is what? (XP gives you the hardware name, so it's a bit easier, but I'm assuming there's an elegant answer in Linux )

You are installing Windoze XP and Mandrake on the same partition???
If so, change it. It will only cost you trouble.

Like I said, 3rd PC not an option and I need XP for work and games.

The error occurs before I get the chance to specify what I want installed, I assume it's a module that Mandrake needs in the installer. I don't know if the hang on Linux booting is related, but I assume so (seems logical that an error in the install may prevent the installed OS from working correctly).

Reading a bit more, is it possible this is a driver module for a bit of my hardware, and if so, would removing it / disabling it from BIOS make any difference? I'd just need to identify what the hardware was then...

edit: found it. USB controller. I think. Can someone confirm that the module is the driver for it?

This thread has a reference to it:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...003/09/4/93653

I hate being this ignorant about a system