I installed Slackware 9.0 from CD at work faultlessly. At Home I ran setup, reformatted old Mandrake partitions on hdb to ext3, set targets - setup replied fstab would be updated correctly - installed Full software, installed bare.i kernel from CD, hotplug, skipped LILO (I use Grub), then mouse, and gpm.

All looked well so far until Network. It asked for sendmail config, but didn't seem to run netconfig. Does it run that here? Then skipped to fonts, clock, timezone, WM config.

Then it asked me to make a password for Root. After entering password, I get an Error 'cannot lock password file, try again later'.

On skipping root password, it then said the install was complete and I should reboot. On reboot, tried to boot from CD with boot: bare.i root=/dev/hdb1 noinit ro - gives the error 'can't mount /, cannot find / in fstab' plus 'possible superblock errors', and 'can't read from ext2' .

I had a look with a knoppix CD and under my hdb partitions there is nothing - so I can't edit fstab.

What on Earth happened? I unplugged cable modem, printer, and tried again. Same Errors. How can I investigate? I'm depressed and stuck with Windows.

Probably some stupid questions... But did you partition your hard disk before installing? Sure you did this on hdb instead of hda?

The partitions were there already from Mandrake 9. I have a /, /usr, /usr/local, /tmp and /var. I still have WinMe on hda which still boots fine from a grub floppy. I just re-formated them from ext2 to ext3 and set the target partitions during setup. The install finds the partitions first time.

I can't see I'm doing anything wrong as I used the install CD at work. Is it some wierd hardware issue that is frying the install.

Tried the install again and in the Network section after the senmail question there is a flicker with text flashing then it skips other network questions and jmps to screen fonts prompt.

On reboot after instal I get ;

The superblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid & it really contains an ext2 filesystem (& not swap or Ufs or something else) ; then the superblock is corrupt & you might try running e2fsck with an alternative superblock.

Also can't mount / partion. Mandrake was running fine on this disk?