Newbie can't install

[poshby]

Hi I am a complete newcomer to linux

I'm trying to install mandrake 10.1 on a laptop:

Compaq Presario 701
Duron 950
toshiba 20G 100ATA HDD
384 MB RAM
S3 Graphics

There is no OS on the machine, HD is empty with no partitions

I boot from the mandrake DVD, have a menu screen press enter to install.

The installer then looks as if it is checking hardware etc, then stops with a kernal panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block(1,3)


have also tried debian, much the same except kernal panic is no init found

have check the ISO image with md5, they are OK

What am I doing wrong?

any help thankfully received.

[AlexK]

try a low level format of the drive and then format it as FAT. After this install linux and see if that helps. Also in the BIOS, set the hard drive's parameters to auto rather than LBA or something along those lines.

[KillianK]

press F1 (I think) on the mandrake bootscreen and select text install, do not you the GUI, it should work sweet then....

Killian,

NextiraOne Ireland

[poshby]

Hi thanks for your advice, I don't get as far as being able to press F1!

However managed to work around by using rawrite to make a bootable floppy, and then boot from the floppy 1st,then DVD, seemed to work.....

...However the install hangs or I get a restart when installing. The presario 701 is well known for its overheat problem (you have to update the bios to stop it crashing in WinXP). In WinXP it just throtles back the CPU by about 50% to stop overheat. But this can't happen when loading Mandrake so I'm sure I'm having overheat crashes and restarts. Not sure how to proceed..

regards

[mhearne]

I have a Dell Inspiron 4000 with a 20 GB harddrive. I used partition magic 7 rescue disks to partition the disk like this:

hda1 fat32 9154 MB Windows 2000
hda2 fat32 384 MB Drivers & Restore files
hda3 ext2 9154 MB Mandrake-10.1
hda4 swap 384 MB swapspace2

I installed windows first & then linux. Since the partitions were pre-defined, all was easy, and the installation program converted the ext2 to ext3.

My notebook doesn't like the 2.6 kernel, and Mandrake installed the 2.4 by default. It runs just fine but the lt-modem doesn't work under linux, so I have to connect to my home network to go online.

Michael