Mandrake 9.0 installation blues

[AgentTwitch]

Oh man, I feel like such a newb. I thought I would give Linux a try. so I went out and got the PowerPack edition of Mandrake 9.0. According to many help sources, if you have windows installed on your computer, LINUX WILL WORK. I wish I could tell what I was doing wrong.

Here is what is going wrong: I place CD1 in to cdrom and then restart my computer. It boots properly and brings me to the "F1 for more options...Enter to install or upgrade" screen. I press enter, and then my screen goes black and my keyboard's caps lock add scroll lock lights blink constantly. My monitor is black but not idle...I thought it was doing a hardware check, but after leaving it like this and watching about 1 hr of TV, there was no change. I tried vgalo, vgalo expert, text and expert modes as well with the same results. AHHHHHHH!

My system is this:
2 ntfs 40GB WDCs (one has windows xp pro on it, the other was to have Linux...the one for linux is formatted, defragged, and ready to rock.)
1 ntfs 120GB IBM firewire external (simply back up)--tried it turned on and off
nvidia GeForve 4 ti4400
Soundblaster! Live xGamer 5.1
Soyo kt400 Dragon pLatinum Ultra
AMD XP 2200+
2 DIMMS of 512MB PC 2700 DDR
not sure if CD drives make a diff, but here goes:
Lite on DVD-ROM 16x
Lite on CDRW 40x

Windows XP runs perfectly. I wish I knew what I was doing wrong. Any help would be much appreciated
:(

[Nu-Bee]

Originally posted by AgentTwitch

My system is this:
2 ntfs 40GB WDCs (one has windows xp pro on it, the other was to have Linux...the one for linux is formatted, defragged, and ready to rock.)

nvidia GeForve 4 ti4400

:(

I see three possible problems:

[list=a]
Make sure that you have PnP OS turned off in your BIOS.
Linux doesn't want to play with NTFS partitions.
Check the Mandrake errata concerning nVidia
[/list=a]

I would begin by checking my BIOS, then RE-fdisking the drive I was going to put linux on as FAT32...and remember...the nVidia video cards need special enocuragement with Linux.

I believe that this last is the biggest of your problems.

Check the errata, and apply the patch:

http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/errata.php3#nvinstall

[DMR]

- Definitely turn off PNP support in your BIOS. While you're in there, turn off any BIOS power management.

- Just delete any partition(s) on the drive, leaving the space free/unallocated. Mandrake will allow you to create your partition(s) in that free space during the installation process.

- Diconnect the firewire drive for now.

- In addition to the "vga" options you've tried, there are others which might help:

nopentium
noapic
noacpi

[AgentTwitch]

The only install that almost worked (ie: went through part of the install process) was the text method. I tried this a while back and had it so I could dual boot...when computer was powered on, I would get the grey mandrake option box that had several links (going to windows nt (or XP in my case) or linux) I couldnt see anything when I would click linux--Same issue with the blank screen. This leads me to believe that it is my video card.

I went to mandrake's page and downloaded the nvidia patch. I then made a dos boot floppy with the patch.pl file (nothing, didn't even try to detect my floppy drive after following instructions), I just did a regular floppy format and copied the patch.pl file onto the floppy and followed the instructions again (didnt access the drive at all) is there a command line I need to add that mandrake didnt say?

"[use CD1 to boot] During boot, press F1 at the splash screen, then place your floppy disk that contains patch.pl in the floppy drive. At the prompt, type "patch", then follow the installation as usual."

It would access my CD for a few moments and then the big silence would come.

[The_Witch_King]

Did u ever get the patch to work? If so how did u do it?

[Choozo]

Hmmm, looks like Mandy 9.0 has the very same install kernel problems as 9.1 has with machines having RAM >= 1GB? (and probably in combination with video cards having >= 128MB RAM)?

The solution should be to hit F1 when prompted at the start of the install, and then enter linux mem=880M vga=768

Hopefully this is fixed in the upcoming version 9.2 (Release set for late september 2003).

Cheers :)

[EDIT]: Oh, and make sure you use the linux-enterprise boot option after successfully installing Mandrake. The enterprise kernel has support for > 1GB RAM.