Hi,

Just thought to give Mandrake Linux 9.0 a try :)
Currently I am using Windows XP Pro. I got two HDDs 20GB and 6GB.
Before I am gonna try Linux, I know I never forget to backup my docs.

In the setup, it warns you that it will restart and start the Linux setup. I am ready for that. I am gonna format all the HDDs and have CLEAN and FRESH install of Linux. NO WINDOWS!!

I wanna know, just in case i needed Windows back, will i be able to boot from my Windows XP CD? and format the HDDs again? so that i could install Windows again.

Appreciate your help..)

If your computer can boot from CD, you will be able to install any OS that comes with a bootable CD.
Windows XP has the option to partition and format the target HDD. Another option to have a NTFS or FAT partition is to use PQMagic.
Mandrake also has an option for a manual format, but for a clean install you can also let the wizard choose for you.

thanks for the info pmi :)
that made me enaw confident to move to linux !!!

but what if i convert to ext2 file format ? :huh: :unsure:

thanks,
/MD

if you convert to ext2, windows setup will see the partitions as an unrecognized file system, and you can just format over them with fat32 or ntfs :), been there done this a few times myself, lol

If you install Linux while having Win xp on your system, you will have a dual boot menu to begin. You wll not lose Windows Xp. The only problem is if you want to get rid of Linux. you have to boot up with a Win 98 boot disk and run fdisk /mbr to get rid of the Linux dual boot menu.

Linux is neat. The dual boot thing is wonderful.

Be careful about which partitions you format though!

Use PartitionMagic ! PartitionMagic, format Linux partition to come after NTFS, Linux swap file behind NTFS or front of Linux partition, make NTFS partition active, bootup from Linux CD, let install use existing Linux partition, LILO is boot manager and sees Linux, etc and NT

I installed Mandrake Linux 9.0 today. I have two physical drives 20GB and a 6GB (Prmary Master and Primary Slave, respectively). I booted from the CD1 and selected Install. Later I came to Erase Disk. How nervous was I at that moment, doubting whether to press OK or not. Who knows if it will erase the 20GB :o I know how stubborn Linux is :D Anyway I pressed OK and it kindly asked me which Hard Disk to erase. :) Phew!

I really laugh at myself now, as I spent like half an hour to configure how to connect to the Internet :lol:
At last in K > What to do? > Use the Internet > Connect to the Internet was there. How easy was that? But wasn't expected it to be there :D

Everything is okay atm. There is a lot of stuff to learn from now on. However there are few awkward things happening/happened to me:

1. That nice boot loader of Linux (I have seen it in another dude's comp) doesn't not show in my comp :unsure: it appears for a second and then disppears and comes to a text mode where I have to type Linux or Failsafe or NT or Floppy. :( I wished I had that nice boot menu with that cool blue screen.

2. During the linux boot, (you know those Setting network parameters [OK], Bringing up loopback interface [OK] etc are there). In mine, Bringing up interface eth0 [FAILED] :o That's the only one which failes. I got a Network Card and it is not connected the LAN. Prolly that should be the case.

3. You know I said, I got two Physical HDDs. But in Linux I can't see my 20GB HDD :o In Windows XP, I can't see my 6GB! But I know that's cos it is ext2 file system, and by Partition Magic it should be viewable.

Linux is cool :) I am lucky to experiece sound as well - lucky Soundblaster Live! Value. And also my LITEON and CREATIVE CD Burners are automatically detected as CDRWs.

In the future I would be asking help from you guys on suggestions to various substiture software I used in Windows. For example: in Windows, this FlashGet helped me very much. I know I can't use it anymore in Linux. So what will be a good download manager?

I hope you enjoy using Linux.

A few solutions to your problems.

1) I think you may need to reconfigure LiLo again in the Control Center.

2) That is exactly the reason. You can disable it at startup, and when you need it just type "ifconfig eth0 up".

3) You lost me there mate :).

Have fun.

To get rid of linux boot menu
from linux:

lilo -u /dev/hda

from Xp :

boot into xp recovery console

run fixmbr

help (for help) about other commands

craftyc, thanks for the reply for the first two questions :)

For the third one, I found a small tool called "explore2fs-1.00pre6" which has read-only access under Windows to the ext2/3 file system of Linux. Thus I was able to view the contents of the ext2 partitions. But the thing is you can't have write access :(
what I need it to copy my C:\Downloads\VMWare to D: drive (which is now in ext2 file system. I can't access the C: drive the linux (made a new topic for that) so I can't access the VMWare installation from Linux.

For those first two answers: I should check them as soon as I reboot. :)

And oscar2043, your info great whenever for some reason I have to get rid of linux...

oscar2043, where do we type "lilo -u /dev/hda" in linux, please? is it in Interactive Mode"?

i tried to change the settings in LiLo to get back the graphical boot menu (also tried Grub but it was a text based boot menu) and it became worse :D

after i restarted, the screen was like this:

Verifying pool data....
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99

the hard disk light was flashing till the "99"s were generated, but stopped after that. i booted from the XP CD and ran fixmbr, but the same thing happened :unsure: so booted again with the XP CD and reinstalled XP. and after all those trouble, reinstalled Linux :D

i am still struggling to install VMWare. i managed to access the VMWare folder thanks to craftyc, using /mnt/nt :) but i have no idea what to do with ".tar.gz" (VMware-workstation-3.1.1-1790.tar.gz) :( i extracted them but couldn't see a file with the .rpm extension. (oh! btw, in windows: just dbl click the .exe and press next, next, next and finish. :D)

but i really like to try this challenging things. i am so embarrased at my performance. but anyway, all of us should learn some thing for the first time. :)

oscar2043, where do we type "lilo -u /dev/hda" in linux, please? is it in Interactive Mode"?

i tried to change the settings in LiLo to get back the graphical boot menu (also tried Grub but it was a text based boot menu) and it became worse :D

after i restarted, the screen was like this:

Verifying pool data....
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99

the hard disk light was flashing till the "99"s were generated, but stopped after that. i booted from the XP CD and ran fixmbr, but the same thing happened :unsure: so booted again with the XP CD and reinstalled XP. and after all those trouble, reinstalled Linux :D

i am still struggling to install VMWare. i managed to access the VMWare folder thanks to craftyc, using /mnt/nt :) but i have no idea what to do with ".tar.gz" (VMware-workstation-3.1.1-1790.tar.gz) :( i extracted them but couldn't see a file with the .rpm extension. (oh! btw, in windows: just dbl click the .exe and press next, next, next and finish. :D)

but i really like to try this challenging things. i am so embarrased at my performance. but anyway, all of us should learn some thing for the first time. :)[/b][/quote]
You type lilo -u /dev/hda in a terminal as root.

You can in Grub get a graphical boot menu, just add "splashimage=(hdx,x)/path/to/image/files" to your /boot/grub/menu.lst (I think that's where it's kept).

Anyway, for VMWare, you do the following in a terminal.

tar xfvz VMware-workstation-3.1.1-1790.tar.gz (You can use the <TAB> button on the keyboard to autocomplete the name)
cd vmware-distrib (change directory into the one created in the step above. Again you can use <TAB>)
./vmware-install.pl (The dot and forward slash are important. The wonderful <TAB> can be used here as well).

PM me if you need more detailed instructions.

The above steps are exactly the same as Windows. You unzip a file, change into the directory created, then execute the installation script.

You will soon get used to the way things work in Linux, so don't worry. We all were once new to Linux.

oscar2043, where do we type "lilo -u /dev/hda" in linux, please? is it in Interactive Mode"?

i tried to change the settings in LiLo to get back the graphical boot menu (also tried Grub but it was a text based boot menu) and it became worse :D

after i restarted, the screen was like this:

Verifying pool data....
99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99 99

the hard disk light was flashing till the "99"s were generated, but stopped after that. i booted from the XP CD and ran fixmbr, but the same thing happened :unsure: so booted again with the XP CD and reinstalled XP. and after all those trouble, reinstalled Linux :D

i am still struggling to install VMWare. i managed to access the VMWare folder thanks to craftyc, using /mnt/nt :) but i have no idea what to do with ".tar.gz" (VMware-workstation-3.1.1-1790.tar.gz) :( i extracted them but couldn't see a file with the .rpm extension. (oh! btw, in windows: just dbl click the .exe and press next, next, next and finish. :D)

but i really like to try this challenging things. i am so embarrased at my performance. but anyway, all of us should learn some thing for the first time. :)[/b][/quote]
lilo -u /dev/hda things like these must be run in a terminal ( the black screen with white letters :lol: ). lilo, grub...actually everything is very dangerous if you dont know what are you doing and it is not easy to learn about linux without reading about every step. Too much reading, to much time. Linux it is not so easy.

It is a good idea installing mc (midnight commander, much like norton commander). Open a terminal and run mc to see if it is already installed.
It is great to opening *.tar.gz (it copies the content to folders)
Then cd new folder and run
./configure
make
make install

This finalizes most of the problems I asked above, thanks to craftyc and oscar2043 :)

Remember, I talked about not having that blue screen Linux boot menu? That's because the "Trend ChipAway Virus" was enabled in my BIOS :D I suspected that should be the reason, as the BIOS warned "A boot virus has been detected in your system" when Linux started to boot. I had to press "[C] for Continue anyway, for each time I booted in Linux. Today I disabled it. And now I get that lovely blue colored boot loader screen :)

My second problem was: that eth01 was trying to detect a LAN connection and it delayed the Linux booting. As I unticked auto-detection while I reinstalled Linux, now it doesn't give me a pain anymore.

Also as Windows XP (or any other Windows) can't see ext2/3 file system, I downloaded a small tool from http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/ and it supports reading the ext2/3 file system. I am able to copy files and folders from those partitions to Windows partitions.

Via a PM of craftyc I knew how to run VMware, (in terminal: type vmware).

From now and so on, I hope my questions are not n00b any more to ask under this thread in the future :D
Because, thanks to you guys, I now have a basic idea of how to install .tar.gz and .rpm files.
Also from my personal experiments I know a little. :)

Thank you very much for gaining me confidence and courage to use Linux :)
So see guys in other threads :)