Hello Everyone,

I just installed Mepis linux 3.3.1, which looks like a great distro! I booted up the live-cd and it auto-detected all my settings, including internet (dsl connection) and my sound card, all without any trouble. I then did a hd install with an ext3 filesystem. When I booted into that, however, I recieved the error about my sound card and that it would use null output. Also I cannot access the internet. I tried running netconfig from a konsole but I'd imagine Mepis runs a bit different from the distro I'm used to, Slackware.

Anyway does anyone have any ideas how to get me up and running?

I don't know exactly how to fix that but I remember having read some threads about this subject at Mepislovers.com. Use advanced search and you should be able to pull something up. If not just post in the newbie forum as all my questions have been answered within an hour or so. Good Luck, Woob

Did you try Mepis OS Center to configure the network connection?

For sound: try "alsoconf" in konsole as root.

Follow this link for troubleshooting http://www.mepis.org/node/5515
and submit a report if you can't fix it.

Yep, tried both of them. alsaconf is what I think you meant to say, I tried that but it said it could not find any sound cards, nor legacy cards.

I tried Mepis OS Center and changed around all the settings for eth0 many different times, even manually entering the IP and everything even though the DHCP should be able to take care of it. Despite all this I still cannot start eth0 no matter what.

The only thing that I can think of is this. I don't really want to install GRUB to my MBR because I don't want to accidentally loose my windows install if something goes wrong. Therefore I installed it to root, but using it this way I cannot boot into my hd install. Therefore I took a grub boot floppy I had from slackware (with kernel 2.4), and this allowed me to boot up Mepis. I did recieve some errors on booting but I couldn't copy them to paste here. I tried making a bootable floppy with Mepis OS but when I have it in (and it was created sucessfully) the computer just ignores it and boots up windows. The only thing I can think of is the slackware grub floppy may be booting the 2.4 kernel for Mepis and this is the reason my soundcard and internet aren't working. I'm not sure, its only a theory.

I'll check out mepislovers.com too, thanks for the link.

ok, install GRUB on root and then use Smart Boot Manager to boot it from there. the link for Smart Boot: http://btmgr.webframe.org/

Try that... I'm not sure I understand what you do but if you get error at boot time that might be the problem.

Even installing that would just do the same thing that I want to avoid with GRUB, writing to the MBR. Is there a floppy-based bootmanager that I could use to get into my partition? Another question, how safe is it to install GRUB to the MBR, would it still recognize my win partition?

Smart Boot Manager runs from floppy and you install GRUB on root not MBR.

If you have Windows 98 you can safely install grub in MBR with XP the recovery (in case something goes wrong) works only 50% of the time (crappy Windows.. what can you expect).

I thought you imaged your system anyway Garibaldi? Or did you just image your Slack install? I've installed grub in my mbr a couple of times for testing different distros, and I've always been able to restore the mbr with either a 98 disc or the XP repair mode. Of course, I could have just been lucky.

There's no danger in writing to the MBR. Well, there is, but any damage you do can be undone by booting from a Windows install disk (I have a Win98 disk around just for this purpose, you can use pretty much any Win version), getting to a command prompt, and entering "fdisk /mbr". This will give you the normal, default MBR that just boots the disk's bootable partition, your Windows install.

Tekkieman, Its just my Slack install, my win install is way to big to back up (video-editing stuff on there is huge, as you well know).

I do have some restore cds and floppies but I'm not sure I want to write to the MBR if I don't have to. I don't know if that is my problem... Do you think not writing Grub to the MBR could be causing my sound and internet to not work correctly? Do you have any recommendations on how to fix them?

so, did you try Smart Boot Floppy?

This on it's own won't cause your internet and sound to die, but if because of this you use a bootdisk that has an old (or otherwise no-good) kernel on it, your sound and internet (and probably other things, too) could get messed up.

I'm tellin' you, writing to your MBR isn't dangerous so long as you have one of those disks on hand. Even if you somehow (I wouldn't know how to do it if I tried) completely and utterly fubared the MBR, a quick boot from a Windows disk and one "fdisk /mbr" (maybe "fdisk -mbr", I don't remember) later, you're fixed up like new.

It's more than worth a try. You seriously can't break anything you couldn't fix.

I tried smart boot floppy but I cannot figure out how to get it on the floppy for installation. The DOS executables don't do anything. Could you help?!!

Ok, to make sure I have a good bootfloppy (I'm running XP) could I download one from here (like a 98SE one):
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
and then once I boot into it enter fdisk /mbr?

Isn't there a way to just create a boot floppy for Mepis?

Why are you looking for downloadable boot floppies? You can either make one with your Windows install or just, like I said, boot from your Windows CD.

Can't you boot from your WinXP (Or Win98, Win2000, whatever version) CD? You shouldn't need a floppy.

I don't know how to make a boot floppy from my current XP install. Could you help me?

Also my windows disk doesn't give me that option (its a fancy HP version that only lets you reinstall, no dos options).