Teilhard Knight wrote:
Can you think any reason why Mandrake 10.0 Community, and also the Official,report that there is a sector of 80 Gb, and another sector of 891 !! Gb overlapping?I had a similar experience recently and had to do a Low level format to rid a corupt partition table , my problem was due to using the drive size limiter jumper on the HD itself, but I suspect disckdrake can cause similar problems when used on a HD originally partitioned with windows apps like PM8, or dos fdisk.This is controversial in linux, but I know that some other linux users I know have experienced something similar to that which you describe. That is why this is off list. I have kept tothe use of windblows apps to partition my dual boot /linux/windblows HD's for quite some time and not had this trouble myself, but as I say I have had to help sort our other folks problems of a similar nature.
Trouble is they don't always show the corrupt nature of the partition table. It all may look OK but there are sectors in the MBR that can store bad data, yet not be read by these apps.I certainly don't have enough professional knowledge to say what that currupt data may be but the consequencies can be awful.When I installed the Official for a second time, I got a worse thing saying that the partition table was too messy for Mandrake. I trusted the offer to fix the problem and I went to the dogs with 4 OSs installed in my 120 Gb disk. It even disappeared from the BIOS. I do not want to tire you with what I did to fix this.
I have checked now possible problems in the partition table with different tools, and there are none.
Recently , that is to say MD10 has come with a version of lilo that cannot work with any other bios setting other than LBA, and refuses to boot any other OS other than the installed MD10, but changing the setting to LBA in bios rectifies that, and so I doubt it is likely to be your problem.I am now trying to install and at the end LILO fails to install everywhere, so I cannot boot.
What on earth is going on?
Teilhard
This is only a pure guess but it sounds like a corrupt partition table in the MBR and somehow you have to re-establish a new partition table from the beginning. That means a full Low Level Format (LLF)
Have you ever done a LLf before. There are HD manufacturer utilities to help you do that. my maxtor has one called powermax which is very intuitive.
One last thought , just an outside possibility, so I need to ask, you don't have an external card reader or camera or some other mass storage device plugged in ? I have know these give faulse partition table readings sometimes, and the solution is to remove them until after you are done, just a thought.
I don't know if this is of any help to you, since without actually experiencing it myself it is hard to be certain what the nature of your problem is but maybe it gives you some ideas. Corrupt partition tables can be a trial sometimes, and if you return to a normal partition table setup I would stick to a windblows app to do the partitioning. It doesn't matter what app does the formatting, but when the MD10 install disc looks to find partitions it is better it finds what you wants already made by another device. Before Mandrake had diskdrake they used to offer PM as their choice of windblows app.
regards,
John
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John Richard Smith
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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