Yesterday i tried to install mandrake, but with problems that got worse
every time i tried to fix them, i had to repartition my disk and reinstall
windows. Here's everything i remember, can anyone help me with these
problems?
The first time i tried to install mandrake, i chose "customized"
installation. After repartitioning and selecting packages, i got some errors
(before it started installing the packages). I started windows and ran the
installer again, choosing "Automated". This time the only problem was that i
couldn't configure my printer (an HP Deskjet 720C), but the installation
worked. I restarted my computer and went in to gnome under my normal user.
The first thing I did was try to change the screen resolution. I went in to
the gnome control panel (i think that's what it was) and didn't find any
resolution option, but i did change a few things in some other area, try all
the window managers, and choose Enlightenement. I'm not sure what i did
after; i think i closed the control panel, ran gnomeicu (which crashed), ran
licq, and found out that i couldn't connect.
My internet connection is DSL using a Startech (that's all i know about it)
NE2000 compatible ISA card. I tried to run the control panel again, but when
the root password dialog came up, i tried to click in the password area and
type the password, but nothing happened (i think pressing enter did close it
though). I tried restarting the computer, and had the same problem. I went
in to root and ran drakconf, then went to the network configuration. I don't
know where to enter the information, but i looked around and found a few
settings i knew, but i still couldn't type anything. I opened a terminal and
an editor, and the keyboard didn't work for them.
I logged out then logged in to the KDE, and this time the keyboard worked. I
tried to enter my network information, but licq still didn't work. I decided
to go back in to windows to see if i could find some help. When i restarted
the computer and grub came up, it was configured to run linux by default. I
changed this (in linux) to run windows by default, and then restarted my
computer. When grub camp up, it has windows selected, but after the 4
seconds were done, it would run the commands to start windows, pause for a
second, and return to the grub menu.
I got out the windows(98) installation diskette and started the computer in
dos. I went to c:\windows and tried to run win, but i got an error about a
resource missing. A few reboots later, i found that windows couldn't open
the registry. I checked in c:\windows, and the registry files weren't
there.
I went back to the KDE (before this, in linux, i had found all my windows
files in /mnt/windows/. I tried to run XMMS with my windows playlist (when i
was still using gnome), but it kept going through the playlist (in about 3-4
second, i had 120-140 files) like i was holding the down key) and looked in
/mnt/windows/, but it was empty. When i checked in dos, all the files were
still there. I tried to find a way to get windows running, but it wouldn't
work.
I ran windows setup to see if i could replace the registry, but it said i
had to format the hard drive. Since there was nothing I could do, i deleted
all the partitions, made one partition that filled the drive, and
reinstalled window. When i installed mandrake, i had one 12GB partition, but
i resized it to ~9GB and added a 2.5GB partition for mandrake and a 128MB
swap partition after the main partition.
What cause the problems i had? How can i get a normal mandrake install
without destroying windows? Can i skip installing a bootloader (keep the
windows loader) and make a boot diskette that will run linux?
