[whiterabbit]

On instillation on Madravia from the CD - which loads fine - the desktop comes up and all seems fine up till the point I drag the mouse onto an item and I don't have to even click on it, the system completeloy freezes up. There are no dialogue boxes or anything on the screen - it just simply freezes up....any ideas?

[daik]

I had a similar problem with mandriva 2007 on my laptop. Actually it did not freeze, but it slowed down to a grinding halt. Perhaps that is what you are experiencing too? What appened to me was gnome going so slow it took almost 3 minutes to just open the menu. I solved that problem by passing a kernel parameter at startup. I added this nmi_watchdog=0 to the boot parameters and it worked, worth a shot maybe..

[Chris H]

Sounds to me like a graphics problem.

Do you have compiz selected? If so disable it (if you can) and see how it goes.

[whiterabbit]

Hi ya's...well....after all that...I had so many problems with it I just gave up...I tried so many different things I decided to switch OS....I'm rtrying to boot up ubuntu now....mandrake was too difficult to boot with far too many errors...ubuntu seems to be ok...it boots and has loaded fine....except just one thing.....on startup of the computer I get this come up....

BusyBox v1.1.3 (Debian 1:1.1.3-5ubuntu12) Built-in shell (ash)
(initramfs)

any ideas?

[devils casper]

How did you burn Ubuntu CD? Have you verified MD5SUM?
Try to reburn Ubuntu .iso image at lowest possible speed supported by your CD Burner.

[whiterabbit]

Hi casper..ok...reburned the disk...and it works..no worries...it installs fine....now then....

on reboot of the system I get the options for WIn XP and ubuntu....I click ubuntu. the boot sequence starts...but then I get a cmd error line with a problem related to user access (the name of which the account was set up in. How can I get out of this? I know the sudo is a pre text add for cmd line - but what cmd will I use to get around this access problem? And where would it be?

Thanks.

[devils casper]

Post the exact error message here. In case error message is long, post last 3-4 lines only.

[whiterabbit]

Hi casper...it's this...

[ 17.346698] ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC

thanks

[devils casper]

Highlight Ubuntu title in GRUB Menu using up/down arrow keys and press 'e'. Select kernel line and press 'e' again. Type noapic at the end of line and hit Enter key. Press 'b'.

Highlight Ubuntu title -- e -- select kernel line -- e -- type noapic -- hit Enter key -- b.

If Ubuntu boots up fine then press Alt+F2 and type this

gksu gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Add noapic at the end of kernel line and save file.

[whiterabbit]

ok...casper...tried it...and this came up...

To run a command as administrato (user "root"), use "sudo<command>".

then under that the command line starts...

ubnutu@ubuntu:~$

is this a command line for the user changer? I did tey to change the user to root user - but still no joy...

ty.