Re: Another Tale of Woe
From: Douglas Mayne (doug_at_SLACKWARE-3.localnet)
Date: 06/17/04
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Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2004 08:01:44 -0600
On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 17:02:29 -0700, Michael P Gabriel wrote:
> Actually, it is my second!!
>
> Hi!
>
> I wanted to get my 77 year old brain exercised so it doesn't turn to
> gorgonzola cheese when I get old.(er?)
>
> So I got hold of a copy of Suse Linux. 7.0. I tried three times to load
> it, but each time I received an, "RPM error", message and I was forced
> me to reboot. Bye Suse!!
>
> Then I got a free copy of Mandrake 10.0. I loaded once successfully,
> even though it showed a "Guppie" error, but barely had a chance to dig
> into it. When it came to bringing it up the next day, it wouldn't boot.
> So, I loaded it a second time. That time, when it was all loaded and
> ready to run..it froze to a light muddy colored screen . Yikes!. So, I
> decided to give it up because I really don't think Linux is for me. And
> it isn't really ready for prime time!
>
> Now I'm stuck with a 40g hdd that CANNOT be formatted. Partition Magic
> gives me an error message...before it even opens. My V-Com Disk
> Utility program can't do a thing. I tried to get the WHOLE disk
> formatted when I loaded WIN XP on lonely 2g partition. No dice! I have
> a program from Western Digital that creates a boot disk which will do
> the job. It tells me to insert a formatted floppy, I do, and then it
> reads there is not enough room on the floppy, try a different medium. I
> reformatted the floppy and tried again. Same nonsense. It wouldn't work
> when I burned it on a CD, and then booted the CD rom drive.
>
> Must I throw away a 40G hard drive?
>
> Mike
>
Caveat: I am not running Windows XP.
I don't think the Western Digital boot utilities will do anything for you
(assuming you have fairly recent hardware). These utilities are for
backward hardware compatibility with older motherboards or for older
operating systems (MSDOS). One thing the Western Digital CD is good for
is diagnostics. I recommend version 10 (version 11 is hiding the
diagnostic program somewhere). Based on the symptoms you describe, I
think it would be a good idea to check your disk for errors to rule out
hardware failure. If the disk checks out, then there is no reason to throw
it out. If you can boot a linux rescue CD, then this command will reset
the partition table. CAUTION: any mistakes can damage data on other drives
in the same system. Assuming this computer has only one drive (WD 40G at
primary master):
dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda count=1 bs=512
You can do what you want about going back to windows. Let me just say
this- comparing any pre-installed operating system with a user installed
OS is unfair. If someone were to hand you a fully functional gnu/linux
computer, then you could make a fair comparison. Just realize you are up a
bit of a learning curve. Setup can be a daunting task. Creating a dual
boot system on a fully allocated disk can be even more difficult. This
fact alone is what has made Knoppix and other run-from-cd linux
distributions very popular. Maybe, you should give one of those distro's a
try to "get your feet wet" working with linux. Here is a link:
http://www.knoppix.net/
A lot of cities have user groups and install-fests. You could check if
they are available in your area.
I don't use SuSe 7.0 or Mandrake 10 (I am using Slackware 9.1+). The
"guppie error" is strange. A quick google shows guppi is a graphing
package:
http://www2.linuxforum.net/RPM/Mandrake/10.0/Mandrake/RPMS/Guppi-0.40.3-7mdk.i586.html
I don't think this crashes the system, but I could be wrong. In any case,
giving specific information to this group at the time of your failure
could have helped to diagnose your problem.
General advice: Starting up at runlevel 1 is always a good first step in
diagnosing failures, etc. For example, I think a lot of distributions want
to jump to runlevel 5, which starts X. If X doesn't start correctly, it
can leave the display in a mode which can lead the user to believe the
computer has crashed. Also, SuSe has more recent versions.
I think it is laudible you want to learn about gnu/linux. The best thing
is you can learn as much or as little as you desire. This is an excellent
resource:
http://www.tldp.org/
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/categories.html
-- Maude: Do you sing and dance? Harold: Uh, no. Maude: I thought not. http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0067185/
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- In reply to: Michael P Gabriel: "Another Tale of Woe"
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