You can't have it both ways! For a new user to Linux, why not buy or burn a cd disk set? This will give you easy access to all you need. The cdrom disks can be had cheap here which will easily solve your issues. I don't recommend the method that you are trying now, as you will just get frustrated.
 
The cdrom.img is only good for starting the installation. You still need either a driver disk to load the modules (drivers) for the external drive, or a cdrom set of Mandrake to complete the installation. The floppy boot disk only get's you as far as getting to the cdrom drive (cd set of Mandrake) or the internal hard drive. It's best suited for folks that for some reason (bios limitations) can't boot off a cdrom drive. The floppy boot image only has the bare minimum, due to the small space on these medium. This is not a full install boot image, which is about 8 mb and fits on a cdrom. So, the main problem is that the correct drivers are not present on the floppy to start an installation on your system.
 
I'm a little confused by your post what is what, but it looks like you are installing from a laptop?
 
Have you checked to see if all your hardware will work with Mandrake 10? Or would Mandriva 2006 be more appropriate?
 
Most folks want to connect to the internet, so what is your internet connection? What method are you using to connect to the internet, cable, DSL, modem?
 
Some laptops, like Sony, can be an issue and need special install instructions.
 
Best to have a good plan before doing the installation.
 
Post your exact make and model of laptop and we can take a look.
 
Also, how much ram is in the system?
 
If you have just a modem connection, then make sure that your modem is supported. Many in laptops are "winmodems" and may or may not work in Mandrake out of the box.
 

Quote:My goal is to install Linux Mandrake 10.0 (dual boot i guess so i can keep windows but windows will be on my internal drive which it is now) on my Seagate 200gb internal harddrive which is encased in an enclosure(making it now an external drive) which is connected to my laptop via USB and THAT the drive is formatted and i believe PARTITIONED from what Ive seen in "Admin Tools/Computer Management/Storage/Disk Management - E:\ "layout -Partitioned" "File System - NTFS" "Status - Healthy and Active" 
So, the Seagate drive, which holds the rar files, is external usb? This will not work with just the floppy, as drivers need to be loaded for usb, so that the drive will be seen. Also, the drive is NTFS, which will not work (unless you really know what you are doing) for an installation. I have never used rar files, just ISO, so I don't know if Mandrake will see them as valid Mandrake archived files. I believe that ISO files are needed for this. Unless, of course, you found an article on how to do this. If so, please post a link to the site or source.
 
The files do not need to be extracted, if you boot off the boot cdrom image (the larger cdrom boot image, burned to a cdrom disk). Mandrake will ask you where your files are located and read the iso images. Not sure about rar files, but if you have a link, this would help.
 
But, consider my recommendation about buying a cdrom set, if your hardware is supported.
 
 

Thanks for the reply! Ok, now to answer your questions.
 
This is a Compaq Presario 900US with Mobile AMD ATHLON XP 1500+ 1.33ghz(which fluctuattes for some damn reason. just a second ago it was 662 mhz and now its 1.33 ghz, but im sure its supposed to be always in the 1.3 ghz area.), 240 mb RAM which I could have sworn was at least 300. but for some reason i think its fluctuating just like the mhz (662) number.
 
Have you checked to see if all your hardware will work
with Mandrake 10? Or would Mandriva 2006 be more
appropriate?
 
as for checking to see if my hardware will work with mandrake 10.0- I have no idea, I dont even know how to check. I only choosed mandrake because i heard its newbie friendly, and I only choosed 10.0 because it was the easiest one to find on my P2P software (StrongDC++). Im 25 yrs old and learn things pretty fast with hands on experience so if you recommend another Linux Distro then I will go with that one.
 
 
 
As for the whole floppy thing... I didnt want to burn the .isos because I didnt have a burner in the previous days. but now i just got my bro's DVD burner which comes with NERO software to now burn the 3 disks.
 
Most folks want to connect to the internet, so what is your
internet connection? What method are you using to connect to
the internet, cable, DSL, modem?
 
As for the NET connection. This has always vexed me... I subscribe to ADELPHIA CABLE. The local cable company which I have a packkage with them that i get cable tv and high speed internet which comes with a router looking thing that the tv cable plugs into and then from that a thick phone plug looking cord i think its called an ethernet cable? runs from that into my wireless router. and I bought a LINKSYS WIRELESS-G broadband router because i have a laptop and wanted the mobility and wireless. so i bought the link sys wireless broadband-g card which slides in on the side of the laptop. But I assume its a cable? but some say that even though its a tv cable that plugs into it.. it can be dsl which i doubt.
 
 
So, the Seagate drive, which holds the rar files, is
external usb? This will not work with just the floppy, as
drivers need to be loaded for usb, so that the drive will be
seen. Also, the drive is NTFS, which will not work (unless
you really know what you are doing) for an installation. I
have never used rar files, just ISO, so I don't know if
Mandrake will see them as valid Mandrake archived files. I
believe that ISO files are needed for this. Unless, of
course, you found an article on how to do this. If so,
please post a link to the site or source.
 
Ok the seagate drive was purchased because i crashed my laptop and the only way to retrieve wanted data was to buy a new hd and i took it to a computer shop which i heard only THEY had the right hardware to perform the procedure. So THEY did all the harddrive setting up stuff. So I assume they formatted it and then partitioned it? When I got my computer back it had my files on the drive and i was able to plug it in and access them. I dont know what NTFS means and what IDE means. but yes its a NTFS drive i guess.
 
The the files i downloaded I believe are the 3 .ISO files but since i have this WinRAR program everything i download if its a zip or whatever seems to change its format to the RAR format automatically. But i open the three archived RAR files and i see all the files are there.
 
Ok Finally now that i have this External DVD burner I will now just burn those three files which i guess people call images thru NERO as IMG files from what I learned on here and just use them to help relieve some problems.
 
BUt heres another question. Since I have files on my USB/Firewire Seagate 200gb External harddrive,and you said that NTFS wont work unless i really know what im doing.. which i dont but maybe i might learn from reading the posts. Is there a way i can partition that EXternal Drive again so that i have one partition for the windows files on there already and of course a whole new partition for Linux.. Does parititioning configure the NTFS to be the other format or no?
 
and since i want to do this on the external drive do i need to back up my C: drive of the internal harddrive in my laptop or is that not necessary.
 
Also, dual boot... is that just for people partitioning their internal harddrive simply because windows is already on that master drive... So since i have an external drive that doesnt have the windows op sys on it will i not need dual boot or is dual boot just means. you get the option of choosing what OS you want to boot when you turn your computer on?
 
as of right now Im going to attempt to burn the three ISOs on disk but i wont attempt to install since i dont know about the external harddrive and the consequences yet.
 

Quote:This is a Compaq Presario 900US with Mobile AMD ATHLON XP 1500+ 1.33ghz(which fluctuattes for some damn reason. just a second ago it was 662 mhz and now its 1.33 ghz, but im sure its supposed to be always in the 1.3 ghz area.), 240 mb RAM which I could have sworn was at least 300. but for some reason i think its fluctuating just like the mhz (662) number.

Don't worry about the numbers fluctuating, it really does not mean much.

This system comes with 256 mb of ram, unless you bought it with more installed. The video card in laptops often borrow some ram for it's functioning. Also, the free ram does fluctuate, based on how much is being used to run programs and background applications.

I looked at your system specifications, which should be OK. The only possible issue is that you probably have just enough ram to run Mandrake in graphical mode.

It sounds like you have broadband connected to an ethernet card to the laptop. This is fine. DSL, most likely would require you to have a user name and password and be connected to the router via a regular phone cable, not the coaxial cable you speak of attached to the router.

Make sure that you burn the iso images correctly. See my article about this.

NTFS is the filesystem that Windows uses. Your drive is formatted as NTFS, Mandrake 10 can have fits about reading files on such a partition for an installation. Since you are burning iso images to cdrom disks, this is not an issue.

IDE means the internal hard drive that is in your system.

In order to boot Mandrake, you need a bootloader, which is grub by default. This is the most commonly used Linux bootloader and is by default in Mandrake. During the installation, Grub can be installed on your internal hard drive (IDE) or in some cases, to the external drive. BUT, if to the external hard drive, it must always be connected to the system, if you install grub to the MBR, or Master Boot Record of the ide drive.

If you install grub to the MBR of the external drive, and can boot from an external usb drive (this is highly dependent on your bios on the laptop), it may work. I don't recommend installing to the external hard drive, unless you know what you are doing and know how to boot from usb drive, if your system supports this.

Mandrake is designed to be installed to the hard drive. it will take some free space from the internal drive to do this. So, dual booting, means that Grub will give you the option of booting either into Windows, or Mandrake.

The other problem is that Compaq systems have specific partitioning setups that are made on the hard drive that sometimes cause issues. Unless you have full recovery disks for your system and hopefully a full cdrom of Windows, I suggest that you consider a "Live CD" version of Linux. This allows whatever version of Linux to run right from the cdrom disk, not touching the hard drive. I mention this, as this forum has quite a few posts about Compaq and HP systems that users have messed up. Many times the full cd sets are not included with these systems, which they should be. This makes recovery a hassle, especially if you have critical information or programs on the internal hard drive.

There are a buch of Live CD versions of Linux out there, including MandrakeLive. You might consider one of these to become comfortable with using Linux first and see if you like it.

Other versions of live cd Linux distros are Knoppix, Mepis and Puppy Linux, to give a few examples. To get an idea what is out there, see the Distrowtach web page

Before I go on, I just wanted to let you know that i went to mandrivas web site and downloaded the new "Mandriva-Linux-2006-CD1&2&3.i586.iso" from their mirrors. since you mentioned trying this newer one, and i read that it has many more fixes such as the kernel whatever that is. (you can tell im a newbie haha) and also i know how to burn them as images on NERO at the slow speed since i read in here that lots of newbies were burning them fast and causing them unreadable and so on. So now shall we switch this topic now to mandriva 2006 which im sure shouldnt change much of the procedure because they are very similiar.
 
"In order to boot Mandrake, you need a bootloader, which is grub by default. This is the most commonly used Linux bootloader and is by default in Mandrake. During the installation, Grub can be installed on your internal hard drive (IDE) or in some cases, to the external drive. BUT, if to the external hard drive, it must always be connected to the system, if you install grub to the MBR, or Master Boot Record of the ide drive."
 
Now MAndriva2006 im going to assume also comes with the GRUB bootloader by default in the 3 isos i just dled last night. As for my EXT drive, i always have it connected to my laptop.
 
"BUT, if to the external hard drive, it must always be connected to the system, if you install grub to the MBR, or Master Boot Record of the ide drive."
 
I have hardly any free space on my IDE (3.2 GB) hence why i want to put linux on the ext drive. so since im not familiar with BIOS and dont know if im able to boot from the external Its safer and easier to simply install GRUB to the IDE's MBR? and im still able to put linux on the ext. drive. That only the GRUB needs to be on the IDE and it will still work to boot linux on the EXT.?
 
Before I got my ext. drive.. Icrashed my computer... and when i got it back from the shop i had to reinstall windows myself. Compaq came with these cd's.. "Compaq Quick Restore Application Recovery CD, and a set of "Compaq QuickRestore System Recovery CDs" and 1 "Compaq Operating System CD" When i had to reinstall windows I wasnt sure what cds to use but since im here now i guess i picked the right ones haha. i believe i used the set of System Recovery CDs. Im not familiar with the function of all these really.. I just got lucky when I choosed the sys rec. cds to get my computer working. I had nothing to lose with this gamble since i knew all my information was on the new External drive which i had to connect once i got my laptop back up and running. But i assume these are the necessary disks to have.
 
oh and one more thing.. since i have files on my new ext drive and I dont think ill have space to put them on my IDE (internal drive right) i would like or have to keep them on the EXT drive. Being that the situation... am i able to partition(since i guess ill have to if i want linux on it as well) the external drive to run linux without losing the files on the ext drive that are already there? Again the guys at the cpu shop did all the ext drive setting up so im not familiar with what was done. Right now im deleting unnecessary files on the Ext. drive to free up space even though i have plenty. Then Im going to defrag it, i also download partition magic. Also as for backing up files.. Do i need to back up anything? if so.. IDE or Ext drive? or both?
 
 
 
So now that we have that covered. Shall we now talk about installing the Mandriva 2006 since you reccommended it and I also always like using the newer updated version of ANYTHING so im also leaning towards to installing the Mandriva 2006.
 
In the meantime Im going to burn the 3 new MAndriva 2006 .isos to cdrs now while i wait for your new reply.
 
Again I appreciate your help and time, you are saving me from lots of stress!
 
 

can someone else help me? My help never came back. hehe probably got tired of reading my long posts.

No, I just lost your thread in the large number recently posted.
 
Again, I don't recommend installing Linux on an external hard drive, unless you know what you are doing. To give an example, see this thread.
 
Read the thread and let me know if you still want to do this!
 
Also check if your bios is able to boot from a usb drive. Do the boot order options show any entries, such as USB-HDD, USB-ZIP...?
 
Maybe I will try this myself on my external drive for fun.

well my usb 200gb harddrive doesnt show up in the BIOS boot section. Ok lots of new things happened since the last post. Iwent and downloaded three new isos from the mandrivas mirrors and burned them onto 3 cd rws Using NERO. The thing is the slowest writing speed you can pick is 8x. So i burned with that speed and went to install linux. I got to the first screen "F1 for options and <Enter> to install. So i hit enter to install and then I just get this blue linux screen with the penguin and a white status bar on the lower left hand corner. and thats it. Nothing happens it just stays there and doesnt show anythign being done. So i would restart my laptop and i found out that if i put cd2 into the drive first boot it that iget the option of putting in the correct cd.. CD1. So i then do that..this now gets me to start the installation. I choose my language and all that stuff, but then the installation stops at the partition section because it wont let me partition my drives. If i hook up my external usb harddrive it sees that and lets me partition it. so i did that and now my drive doesnt show up in windows... and i cant access it. At this point i dont care what i do. I just want to start using linux whether its on my C: in my internal harddrive or on my external harddrive. I already wiped out my entire system and reinstalled it and have everythign backed up so im starting from scratch.
 
Why isnt the installation working right.. since it seems to freeze up. I redownloaded 3 isos form another mirror on mandrivas site and d/led a program to burn called "cd dvd indepth" to burn the isos as images since it allows me to slow down the write speed to 2x and 4x whereas nero only lets me slow it down to 8x. So anyways i burned the 3 new isos to the 3 new cdrws with the new 4x speed and then use them to try to install again and i got the EXACT same problem with them. So i assume that the writing speed isnt a problem here. Also if im in windows and insert the CD1 iso cdrw into the cd rom drive it will run and pop up a windows asking to install with many other options. This windows i never saw before when i tried to install linux on start up... Right now I ahve no idea whats wrong and what to do. I was hopeing that since i burned them correctly and partition the c drive correctly with the "/" "/home" "ext32" my "windows" "swap" that that would be the hardest part of the process so i understand that i think. but still I cant get that far. My usb isnt seen in my bios but is seen in the installation process. whereas my internal drive isnt... now my ext usb drive isnt seen in windows but my windows is still working. *gasp* help

NEWER UPDATE...
 
I have now try partitioning my internal harddrive with windows on it. I used Partition Magic to create partitions "C:\"(2.15GB) and "E:\"(10.9GB). But now "E:\" is the old C: and windows is on that drive. "C:\" is a partition i name "HOME" I read it was good to make extra partitions for future use so i decided to make one to put files on that may be used by both windows and linux or just more space for another distro.
 
PLEASE NOTE both the C and E are FAT32 filesystems since i changed them when i reinstalled the windows OS and it allowed me to pick what file system to now use for windows. Since I heard people say FAT32 is read by linux... Ive chosen for that reason.
 
i tried reinstalling the linux cds again and the same problem occurs... am i not partitioning right? I just updated my Phoenix BIOS with a program from their site PHLASH BIOS which flashes the bios.
 
I dont know what to do now...

I recommend not changing anything further until we see what you have. Stop trying to change your partitions for now.
 
Your external hard drive is not seen by Windows, as you formatted it with Linux partitions, correct? Windows does not see Linux partitions, except for the Computer Management Administrative Tools Utility. So, your drive will not be seen via My Computer.
 
In terms of the new cd disks that you burned, did you check the integrity of the disks during the installation process? Fedora should have given you the opportunity to do this early durng the installation phase.
 
Depending on how you downloaded the iso files, they could be corrupt. It's a good idea to check their integrity before trying an installation.
 
Laptop cdrom drives can be funky with cdrw disks that are home burned. I have run into this before. Did you burn the disks on the same cdrw drive that you are attempting the install with? CD-R disks are often better suited for this.
 
If you are going to install Mandriva on this system, you may need to pass a command at the initial boot menu screen for your video card. Do you know what video card is on the laptop?
 
The best way to partition a drive for dual booting and installing Linux, is to install Windows and use PartitionMagic to resize the Windows partiton to leave some free space (as much as you need for Linux) at the end of the drive. Then you tell Mandriva's partitioning section to use the free space, during the installation.
 
When you use PartitionMagic, use it as a tool, not as a total solution. You don't want to make multiple fat32 partitions ahead of time. You either;
 
1. use it to make one fat32 partition for Windows and leave free space (no partition) for Mandriva. This allows Mandriva to automatically make and set the partitions for you on the free space. or;
 
2. make one partition for Windows and make one linux partiton (say ext3) and one swap partition for Linux. Then you point the partition utility in Mandriva to use those partitions for your installation, using the "expert partitioning" mode of the Mandriva utility.
 
Now you have a different problem. Drive c is now e? Did you install Windows on e or c? What is on c?
 
Right now, I suggest that you post what your partitions are. Use PartitionMagic to post what the drive partitions are. Include what you set the partitons at. Did you make all primary partitions or a Primary and logical partition? Also post, if possible the logical order of the partitions, as seen in PartitionMagic (PM). Say;
 
Drive c = Primary partiton = ist partition shown in PM.
 
Drive e = logical partition = second in order.
 
I think that you are getting way ahead of youreself with this process. Please try to avoid changing things until we see what you got right now.
 
 

Thanks for sticking around trying to help me with this. I have a feeling after we are done; these threads can be edited and bundled to make your own step by step mandriva linux ebook. haha.
 
Anywho, first off are you able to recover data on a drive that got partitioned? probably not right?
 
Right now, I reinstalled my system so everything is back to normal. Starting from scratch. c:\ is back to c:\.
 
As for checking the integrity of disks during installation... I don't know how to check the integrity. Also I noticed you referenced Fedora's installation. this is Mandriva 2006. Now when I seen you mentioned checking integrity of disks... as far as i know when i open them with "Run" "D:\" all the files were there shown in the open box along with all the subfolders.
However I learned about checking something called the MD5SUM of a installation or something? I read about them and that the values should match. So i d/led the program MD5SUM.Exe to do that. I guess im supposed to put it in my C:\WINDOWS folder and then run it and then a dos windows pops up and then closes quickly.
 
As for the type of cds being used for burning and the type of drives being used for the burning and the installation... I use a DVD burner to burn the disks, which let me note ARE NOT CD/RWS but in fact are CD-R. I apologize for stating that they were cd-rws. I just noticed the other day that they were CDR.
 
The drive i put the burned disks into is the drive that is built into the laptop which is "IDE\Compaq DVD-ROM GDR8081N" but again I use two seperate drives to do the burning and the installation. the burning drive is an external usb and the drive used for installation is the one built in.
 
My Video card is a MOBILITY U1 ATI (C6), ATI Technologies with 16 mb RAM. The installed drive for it is ati2dvag.dll version 5.1.2600.0.
 
For partitioning-
I read that it was smart to make extra partitions for more Linux Distros in the future. But anyways. My drive is back to normal So the drive has the factory partitions which one big partition for C:\ and being Primary. Partition Magic shows DISK 1 have the one big C:\ partition with 28,615.8 MB and says that 7,281.4MB is USED. It shows a visual bar to show the drives with their partitions on Disk 1 it shows a sandy skin color in the bar im guessing which displays data on the disk within that partition?
 
My my ext USB HD is DISK 2 and i really screwed that up with that partitioning.
 
For DISK 2 its displays:
DISK 2
-----------------------------------------
Local Disk (* Linux Ext2 Active Primary
(*) Extended None Primary
SWAPSPACE2(* Linux Swap None Logical
Local Disk (* Linux Ext2 None Logical
Local Disk (* Linux Ext3 None Logical
SWAPSPACE2(* Linux Swap None Logical
Local Disk (* Linux Ext3 None Logical
 
I think all my data is lost that I had on it before of course.Which wasnt a total loss. I think Partition MAgic and mandriva double the partitioning hence why so many.
 
oh btw I see there are two black arrows pointing to a "2GB Boot Boundary" and a "1024 Cylinder Boundary" on both Disk1 and Disk2.
 
Ok now moving on, as you are familiar with Partition Magic there is an "install another operating system" option. and then you are allowed to click Linux as the lost option... Should I use this? or should i just let Mandriva do it.
 
To tag onto that thought. You said:
"You either;
 
1. use it to make one fat32 partition for Windows and leave free space (no partition) for Mandriva. This allows Mandriva to automatically make and set the partitions for you on the free space. or;
 
2. make one partition for Windows and make one linux partiton (say ext3) and one swap partition for Linux. Then you point the partition utility in Mandriva to use those partitions for your installation, using the "expert partitioning" mode of the Mandriva utility."
 
When I partitioned my disk1 before.. I made a swap parition which i read is to be double your RAM size in your computer. During this process it asks if I want to put it to the beginning of the disk because it says it runs better or something. So I clicked YES to do that before. So what I am getting at is how many partition should i have on Disk 1 and what order do they go in? Because before when i put the LINUX SWAP partition at the beginning of the disk i think it caused my computer to not boot up windows. But like I said my system is back to normal with factory settings.
 
Another quick question, I read somewhere that maybe I should upgrade my bios is that necessary? before i went to the website of compaq where i was able to download some update drive for my BIOS which was called PHLASH BIOS or somethign like that...
 
another thing I learned is there are these i386, i486, i586, i686, and something like x86_84 i think it was. I noticed these were version numbers of something? I have a Compaq Presario with all i know is AMD Athlon XP 1500+. I believe I downloaded the Mandriva 2006 3 isos that were for x86-32(i586). I read last night that AMD Athlon are i686. I dont know if this means anything but in my C:\ there is an i386 directory with sub directories such as SYSTEM32. Does this mean mine is a i386? and that the person was wrong when they said that Athlons are not i386 that intels are i386?
 
But in the meantime Im going to wait. I have the same three cd-rs burned with the 3 complete isos, with one partition on disk1 being the C: for winblows xp with NTFS filesystem. I have the series of 2 Partition Magic Floppy diskettes made one being a boot and the other being a program floppy. I also have the linux cdrom.img written to another floppy for the linux boot, since i read that some laptops and/or their cdrom drives have a hard time booting from their cd rom drives and that a boot floppy is necessary. but please note only the cdrom.img is written to floppy.
I noticed there is a all.img, boot.iso, hd_grup.img, ka.img, the MD5SUM file(opened in notepad and saw the values for each of these images), network.img, network drivers.img and a pcmcia.img. I kinda have an idea that they are for different types of installations. and the the grub is for installs off the harddrive. that I may need to look further into these but I wont right now.
 
 
 
 

well i got anxious and now i tried Ubuntu and i got it fully installed now im trying to figure out to get my wireless net connection to work. Figure out how to get certain programs for linux like i want my StrongDC++ file sharing prog but linux doesnt recognize .exe and .rar files . Now so far with Ubuntu i am having no problems... just getting used to everything... quick question my ext harddrive is now there... but i cant get into a Lost + Found directory in the drive. Only root access i guess so then i logged out to tryt o log onto root but i dont know how to.. i dont know what the username and pw is for that.. i know windows was simply admin... btw whats your opinion on Ubuntu i see on Distrowatch, that its the number one downloaded distro and mandriva is like number four... I heard Ubuntu is a bit more advanced.. hell im having a hard time changing the desktop there i guess its Gnome that controls all that... everythign is brown thats all i know. Feel like im in cocoa land.
 
Anyways i got Ubuntu, but why doesnt mandriva 2006 want to install though? i tried the 86 64 isos.. but when i booted the first cd. it said i needed to use the 32 version. which i was happy and unhappy to see. happy to know my processor is 32 but mad that its old and that i wasted more cds burning these isos... anyone need them? pay for shipping and handline. ill send them to you haha. so i take it... there is something about mandriva that doesnt like my computer?
 
but right now i want to know about the data i accidentally partitioned over... could i still retrieve it... is it the data locked in the lost + found folder that i cant get access to?