ATTN: Slackware Pros Slackware System Down!
 

I know my I have not been posting everyday like usually but I'll throw it out there I went back to windows world I mean I missed being able to watch youtube videos . I missed being able to read my hotmail and actually be able to click the links. Something about Hotmail live or something says that I have to upgrade my firefox. But here is the major issue here.

Some of you that have been faithfully helping me out know that I put slackware on two computers. I have my computer that is a Dual boot. Then I have my dad computers who he said sure why not you can install just slackware on it. PRoblem..... At first it seems like everything was all fine because when I installed slackware on his computer everything worked perfectly infact it even had me jealous. ("Since I still can't get my sound card to work. Or my Dual Screens.")

Everything was working fine until one day I restarted it. (After trying a few wireless cards in attempts to find a working one so my dad can be wireless) It never turns off it keeps restarting never loads.. Then it goes to a point were it says "type in root password to enter cfdisk or fdisk" So obviously one day I go in there and yea I see the partions and swap I put in there it made me think did I even properly fix the swap partion but that was another story. Everything "seems" to be ok but i can't leave it just goes for another loop after I exit that option. Finnally I panicked since I could not load any cd's in the start because although the labtop only has slackware on it it also has Lilo. I was attempting to start over. I was thinking maybe even try to stick unbuntu on there. to try to I guess format it . However that failed it was like hardrive read -only all of a sudden . all I have to say is I had a blown expression on my face.:cry: <--me <-----senses future --->:tisk: ----->I wanna be like --->:jawa:

I don't know what to do it seems like it won't boot any cd's all that happens is Lilo asks to to choose Slackware (which is the only choice anyway)and it starts trying to load it and failing miserably.

Alternate plans... (stashing the labtop in an abandoned building hoping some day people will build over it and spend loads of cash trying to find another old labtop ?) Just kidding .... seriously guys help would be nice.

LILO should never interrupt booting from a CD/DVD. This happens way before LILO loads. This is almost certainly a BIOS thing. Enter your BIOS according to instructions that *may* be printed on the screen immediately after turning the computer on. On my PC I press the Delete key -- but it may be the F8 key or something else. Make sure booting from CD is enabled and is ranked above booting from the hard drive.
Something is obviously wrong with your setup. First of all, you need to install the Adobe Flash plugin if you want to view YouTube videos (and other flash videos). There is a SlackBuild at slackbuilds.org -- or you can download Adobe's Flash plugin from their site and install it using their installer (or just extract the tarball and copy libflashplayer.so to /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins). I can read my Hotmail perfectly fine...I have no idea what you have done here. Make sure you are running the latest version of Firefox from the patches/ directory at your favourite mirror (which is mozilla-firefox-2.0.0.16-i686-1 right now) and it should work fine. If not, try deleting your profile (or create a new one by running `firefox -P` in a terminal).

In my post I speak of two different computers One computer has the problem with the hotmail, youtube videos , dual screans and sound. Then I have the PC that is totally crashed :(. that was like the first thing I check Lilo opens literally instantly from the time I press power and look at the screen.

I think you forgot an install disk into CD/DVD drive and it rebooted from it,
the cfdisk/fdisk prompt comes from the installation early step.
You never see the cfdisk/fdisk question at the booting stage of an installed system
Try to eject the CD/DVD

Yes, I realize this. I just figured I would talk about both since neither thing should happen on either computer.
Something is obviously awry unless you have a VERY fast booting computer that skips all BIOS messages. That is one strange motherboard if that is the case. All computers that I have seen have at least SOME time to enter the BIOS. Try pressing F1, F2, DEL, ESC, F10, or another key/key combination from this page immediately upon turning on the PC. Try repeatedly pressing the key very quickly right when you turn on the computer. Maybe one of them will let you get into the BIOS.

I never liked arguments like this one.
You know, I'm using slackware 12.1, firefox (the one which is installed by default, version 2.0.0.14), and I'm able to watch youtube videos, just because I've downloaded flash plugin installer for firefox, read instructions and installed it. Why didn't you do the same thing? >_<

As for trouble with booting CDs. Device boot order is normally specified in bios, and lilo can't break it. To boot CD you'll have to open bios settings menu and check if it CD is a first boot device. At least it's how things work on normal "non-laptop" PC. (Never had laptop, but I don't think that there should be any difference).
You can enter bios setting by pressing DEL on system startup.
Thinking about it I saw one or two computers where startup bios testing was so fast (or monitor was so bad), that bios startup was complete before user could see anything on the screen (By the way, they were using LCD monitors). That might explain why you instantly see lilo menu. Try pressing "pause" (will pause bios startup test, can be resumed either by pressing pause again, or by pressing any other button) or "delete" (will make you go to bios settings menu) immediately after turning machine on.

Never used it, can't help. But isn't that possible (via POP3 or whatever) to download mail from hotmail using KMail or other program?

You can with Thunderbird, but to be honest, it's often a pain in the *ss, thanks to the hotmail programmers who change the formats on a regular base...
So, get a Gmail address en forget about hotmail (which sucks anyway, IMHO).

I haven't wrestled with this for a while, but as far as I know, Hotmail only supports POP3 if you pay for it. Since I've been with Hotmail for SO long I can still use the http access through a mail client. However, the ONLY mail client that supports this, as far as I know, is Outlook Express in Windows. I got it working by installing the Webmail extension for Thunderbird; however, I don't think ANY Linux mail clients support it out of the box (though I could be wrong).

Hi,

Some BIOS have a quiet boot. You can press the Tab key to show the boot screen. This will depend on the machine manufacture and BIOS.

Most use the 'del' key to enter the setup. But others use the 'F2' and sometimes the 'esc' key. If you hold down any key you will get a keyboard error and the BIOS will give you the option to enter the setup. Most newer BIOS use this type of routine to recover from a keyboard problem.

You could always google with the search key 'manufacture model # + BIOS + setup' to find the hotkey.

In this case hotmail isn't worth using it. I have 4 free (non-hotmail) mailboxes on different services, and they all allow pop3/smtp access for free.

I would like to get one of those e-mail address. However in reguards to the whole System down I entered in the bios and double checked the boot order I have it on cdrom - removeable devices - hardrive booting last. But it loads so instantaneously from the start to lilo there is little or no pause normally I am acustomed to this the computer "starts to load" just loading up its regular process and then maybe Windows or Slackware goes during this time you can before the windows or slackware loads it asks would you like to boot from cd rom. However this is not the case it just goes "COMPAQ" Lilo in fact the load from "Compaq" to lilo goes so fast that I had to restart several times to even see how to enter the bios.

I tried responding back to this thread a few days ago but had log in issues. I don't know was my mistake made with only having 1 operating system being slackware and still adding Lilo because I think it looks cool :(.

Hi,

It sounds like you have 'quiet boot' enabled in the BIOS. Now that you have the hotkey to enter the BIOS you should be able to setup the BIOS to show the 'POST' information.

Well you can do that.

Firefox 3.0.1 and XULRunner 1.9 SlackBuilds

You don't need to upgrade FF to use Hotmail. It works fine with FF 2.0.0.16 on my machine. It sounds almost like you have javascript turned off globally in FF, which is one reason why you would get a message like that. If you have turned off Javascript, then download the NoScript plugin which allows you to turn Javascript, Flash and co on and off on a per site basis and allow msn.com, live.com and hotmail.com for Hotmail.

EDIT: can you access Hotmail and Youtube from Konqueror or Seamonkey?

The first box is my ISP's, second is gmail, and two others are provided by two russian search engines (yandex/rambler, both won't be much use for you unless you know russian language - you simply won't be able to register without it, although you should be able to register using out-of-russia IP address). So you probably will be able to get only gmail account. However I really think that there should be other free email services with free pop3 access.