[Nelug] Mandrake 9.2 Installation Difficulties.

[Redalpha]

Dear John and List

I'm sorry if you were put off by my asking to work offlist. I was hoping to 
spare nelug members the tedium of reading the following:-

I'm new to Linux and can use the desktop ok but as yet have not come to terms 
with the command line.  I have very little experience of DOS either, come to 
that!  My experiences with Linux go back to Red Hat 7.1 and failed attempts 
to install, to success with installing Suse 8.2, Lindows (ugh!), Suse 9.0 and 
Fedora Core 1. These have all been succesful installations.  However, I would 
like to try Mandrake 9.2 as I've been advised this suits ex-windows owners 
well. The problem is that this does not install on my computer. The 3 
installation discs can install on my son's, so they work.
My computer has an AMD Athlon XP2000+ Processor, Chipset is SIS5513, 256 MB 
RAM, two 40 GB hard drives, CD Rom and CDRW.It has an nVidia Riva graphics 
card,ADSL Router internet connection. On attempted installation the disc 
freezes in the early stage (not reaching the language selection section) and 
outputs the following:-

hda: lost interrupt
hda: host protected area=>1
hda:lost interrupt
partition check
hda<4> hda:dma_timer_expiry:dma status==0X64
hdc:lost interrupt
hdd:lost interrupt
ad infinitum

hdc is cdrom and hdd is cd rw.

I would be interested to know if this is a hardware problem and if I can use 
the command line installation method to overcome the difficulty.

As a point of interest the Knoppix CD Linux won't play either.

Any help you can give would be appreciated.
Thanks


On Saturday 21 February 2004 8:53 am, you wrote:
> Redalpha,
>
> these sort of questions should be answered on this list. Its its main
> purpose.
>
> Without hardware specs and error messages we can only make guesses.
>
> If your computer has a low resoultion video card or limited ram then you
> should install in text mode.
>
> Startup from the Installation disk.
>
> On startup press F1 key
>
> This will put you into the Installation help screen
>
> Please read this help page
>
> I would think the solution to your problem would be install in text
> mode.
>
> So enter    text    then push enter
>
> Then follow the DOS style interface.
>
> If this information does not solve your problem please give us more info or
> take your computer to the meet. I am sure the guys would help you install.
>
>
> Johng
>
> Redalpha wrote:
> >Dear Group
> >
> >Would anyone be willing to advise me (off group) as to why I'm having so
> > much difficulty installing Mandrake 9.2 on my computer? Machine can
> > install Suse 9, and Fedora, but will not look at the Mandrake Installer!
> > I think hardware is a problem but have insufficient understanding to
> > overcome difficulty. Thanks in advance

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