Help: Mandrake 10.1 doesn't install on a Toshiba laptop

[rolandpish]

Hi, I'm having a problem installing Linux Mandrake 10.1
in my Toshiba Satellite Pro Laptop.

The problem I have is with my CDROM drive:

First of all, I'm booting from the CDROM drive with the
Linux Mandrake 10.1 disk and it loads the first installation
screen, then it says: No CDROM drive found. But: the installer
is running from the CDROM!!

Is there a special way to install this Linux to a Laptop?

How can I make to install it in my Laptop?

NOTE: My laptop doesn't have a floppy drive. It only has: a
CDROM drive, a PCMCIA Network card and a PCMCIA 260MB hard
drive.

Thanks in advance.
Roland

[AlexK]

there is no special way to install linux onto laptops. From looking at your laptop's specs, it sounds as if your laptop is fairly old and may not support booting from the cd-rom. Also you say that you have 260Mb of disk space, this may not be enough for Mandrake, you should try something like DSL (Damm Small Linux), it only takes up 50 Mb and runs on older machines, however if you really want to put mandrake, try the following:

1. Did you download the cds? If so, check the MD5SUM or try re-downloading them.
2. Check to see if the cds work on another computer.

If that yields no results try this:
1. In the BIOS, make sure that CD is selected as 1st boot device.
2. Using nero or similar, create a bootable CD which contains extracted cdrom.img file which can be found on disc 1 of the MDK 10.1 cds. The trick is to have the cd emulate a floppy disk. Nero has this option of creating such cds.
3. Insert this cd into the drive and wait for things to get going.
4. When prompted insert the Mandrake cds

[rolandpish]

Thanks for your time Alex,
I'm sorry, I forgot to mention that my laptop is booting
successfully from the CD-Rom and it has a 8GB hard drive
plus an external PCMCIA 260MB Hard Drive.

I installed this distribution in a desktop machine without
any problem using the same CD's I'm trying for the laptop.
I was looking that a lot of people has this problem.

Then I tried with a network install using another linux
mandrake 10.1 computer and a windows xp computer,
I've tried installing using a FTP server and using a
HTTP server with no success. Both computers (XP and
Mandrake) have Apache, both have ftp service running,
and there is no way to install mandrake on my laptop.

Should I try a different distribution of linux?
Which one you recommend?

Thanks a lot
Regards
Roland

[AlexK]

Ok, firstly I would try create the floppy emulated cd and try install linux using that. Another thing you could try, and I don't know if it will help is to try and disconnect the PCMCIA hard drive and then proceed to install linux.

Another thing you could try is to pass the acpi_off command (I think that is the syntax) to the system before booting into the install. The way to do this is to instead of hitting return (from memory) to enter the linux setup, press F2 (again from memory) to enter teh advanced mode, then type the acpi_off or no_apic command, there should be a list of options to select before booting into install when you press the F2 button. My memory is really foggy about this kind of install, and I dont remember the exact commands to enter.

If all this fails, then try a different distrubution of linux. I would recomend Suse if you want a near hassle free setup, or you could try DSL or Debian. Also, you could try the latest Mandrake 10.2 (Mandriva LE 2005).

[TheGreen]

I have a Satellite Pro 6100.

I agree with Alex, boot with no acpi. I have installed Mandrake 10 and 10.1 on mine with no issues. BUT I had other issues because the 6100 is kind of a pain with linux. The best distro I have found for this particular laptop is Mepis. Even my Atheros mini wifi works, so I use Mepis on this laptop. I run Mandrake 10.1 on all my servers though.

Give Mepis a try, its a live CD, so you can boot into it and see if you like it (obviusly it will be slow since it is running from ram) if you do like it there is an install to hard drive wizard on the desktop, click and follow the prompts and you are good to go.

http://www.mepis.org/

[rolandpish]

Thanks a lot.

I was able to install Mandrake choosing the older kernel
that the installer has.

The problem is Mandrake was too slow for my laptop,
so I will follow your advice and give Mepis or Atheros a try.

Thanks for everything
Regards

Roland

[linketoile]

I have the same problem

I burn the iso on a DVD I boot from the DVD And just after loadong the first step into the memory it says : " CDROM device not found " arggggggggggg
but the dVd is working on my destop i m very upset...
I just bought that compaq pressario so it s very new...


install the older kernel what do you mean a oldr mandrake ???
helppppp

thanks

[AlexK]

Ok, when you burnt the DVD, did you extract the image? If you are using nero, you should burn the burn as image option.

When you say that the DVD is working on your desktop, are you able to boot into the Mandrake installation on the desktop?

To install the older kernel, what you have to do is when it gets to the screen which says something like press enter to continue installation, press F2 (I think) for more options etc. Press F2 and from there you can tell it to install using the older kernel.

Also you might find that Mandrake 10.1 might not work on newer centrino based laptops as at the time of Mandrake 10.1 being released, the Sonoma platform wasn't available. So, the workaround for this was to boot using the older kernel.