Re: Another Tale of Woe

From: P.T. Breuer (ptb_at_oboe.it.uc3m.es)
Date: 06/18/04 

Date: Fri, 18 Jun 2004 12:52:48 +0200

Michael P Gabriel <axipolti@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I wanted to get my 77 year old brain exercised so it doesn't turn to
> gorgonzola cheese when I get old.(er?)

Good - so exercise it and ...

>
> So I got hold of a copy of Suse Linux. 7.0. I tried three times to

7.0 is years old. It is extremely unlikely to work on recent hardware,
except if you chuck out most of it and run the rest in conservative
modes.

> load it, but each time I received an, "RPM error", message and I was
> forced me to reboot. Bye Suse!!

Crazy. Don't do that. That your hardware doesn't even work well enough
to read the CD should tell you to fix yoru hardware, nothing else.
Transfer the cd to disk if you think it will help - or do an install by
ftp. I never understood why MS people used cds instead of the net -
part of the whole failure of MS to understand the net.

> Then I got a free copy of Mandrake 10.0. I loaded once successfully,

Which 10.0? Community edition is not one you should use as it was a
work in progress, and you are clearly not ready for work in progress.

> even though it showed a "Guppie" error, but barely had a chance to

What's a "guppie"? Do you mean "yuppie"? Or "guppy"?

   guppy
          n : small freshwater fish of South America and West Indies;
          often kept in aquariums [syn: {rainbow fish}, {Lebistes
          reticulatus}]

> dig into it.

Well do, or don't. Sounds like your hard disk is borkeed. Cease.
Desist. When your hardware works within standards try again, or
meanwhile do something else.

> When it came to bringing it up the next day, it wouldn't
> boot.

Of course it would! Things don't change without you doing something.
It problably NEVER booted, probably because you didn't put a boot
sector on.

> So, I loaded it a second time.

Well DON'T! How crazy can you get? Just rewrite the boot sector, not
the whole thing! You want to rewrite 512 bytes, not 8 GB.

> That time, when it was all loaded
> and ready to run..it froze to a light muddy colored screen

It was running - and if it froze then you have more indications of a
hardware problem. FIx your hardware.

> . Yikes!.

What's "yikes" about? That you can't think for a millisecond? DO this
SLOWLY. Take your time, investigating your hardware as you go.

> So, I decided to give it up

You didn't even try.

Peter