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[Guest]

I was asked to help my inlaws with a PC that has a problem.

Power on and it comes up with the selections last known good and safe mode
or normal. No matter what you choose its start to come up then goes right
back to a reboot.

Any ideas?

 

[John Bailo]

You might want to upgrade them to Linux.

I recommend Suse 9.2.

http://www.suse.com

 

[Rich Barry]

Stacey, if they have a WinXP CD then try a Repair Install. Pay close
attention to Step 3
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/XPrepairinstall.htm

 

[Guest]

I will give it a try.

The one problem is that I can not get it to boot from the cd drive.

 

[Rick \Nutcase\ Rogers]

Wonderful idea. Take someone who is not fluent in computers and put them
into a linux environment. Right. Just brilliant.

Rich has given a more appropriate answer.

--
Best of Luck,

Rick Rogers, aka "Nutcase" - Microsoft MVP

Associate Expert - WindowsXP Expert Zone

Windows help - www.rickrogers.org

 

[Guest]

How do I get in to change the startup to cd first.

 

[T. Waters]

Stacey, you may need to change the booting order in the BIOS. Your CD drive
may not be set to boot first.
To find out how to enter your system's BIOS, please see this article:
"Access/Enter Motherboard BIOS"
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

 

[NoNoBadDog!]

And you might want to take a flying leap and take your BS answers with you.

Bobby

 

[bumtracks]

Where is the free version of linux that self installs itself and self
configures dual boot that can be added to an existing windows XP pc ?

 

[NoStop]

Where is the free version of linux that self installs itself and self
configures dual boot that can be added to an existing windows XP pc ?

You can pickup Mandrake 10.1 here ...

http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=29

You'll want to get all 3 CD's: CD1 to CD3. After downloading them you should
do a MD5SUM to make sure the ISO files came across the Net without any
problems. You can google for a MD5SUM for Windoze. With the Windoze version
you'll (at a command prompt I believe) run the program with the ISO
filename and it'll produce a long number. That number needs to be the same
as the MD5SUM number displayed next to the download file on the site.

Once you have created the 3 CDs from the ISO files you've downloaded, you're
ready to go and install Mandrake 10.1. It is probably the easiest Linux
distro to install for a newbie and will see your existing Windoze partition
and allow you to decrease the size of that partition leaving free unused
space on the end of your hard drive to install Linux. You should make sure
your existing partition is in order FIRST. So run chkdsk on it and defrag
it before going to install Mandrake.

When you install Mandrake you can choose to have it use LILO as the boot
manager. This will then allow you to dualboot into XP or Mandrake 10.1.

Of course that site offers a number of other distros if you want to use
something else. Personally, I'm very impressed with Mandrake 10.1 and
highly recommend it for someone first coming into the Linux world from
Windoze.

If it's SuSE you want, it's on the site here ...

http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=2

The 9.1 Personal version comes on just one CD or you can download the 9.1
live-eval CD that will let you boot from the CD and play with Linux without
touching your Windoze hard drive. Or, as you'll see you can do an FTP
install of SuSE from there, so you don't even need to download a whole ISO.


Good luck and have fun!


--
-=[ *Usenet FAQ* ]=-
A. Yes it is. It's called "Top Posting" and frowned on by the Usenet
community.
Q. But isn't that backasswards?
A. If their reply comes BEFORE what they are quoting, they probably use
Outlook Express under Windoze.
Q. How can I tell what OS a Usenet poster runs?

 

[Malke]

Stacey, you may need to change the booting order in the BIOS. Your CD
drive may not be set to boot first.
To find out how to enter your system's BIOS, please see this article:
"Access/Enter Motherboard BIOS"
http://www.michaelstevenstech.com/bios_manufacturer.htm

Stacey, you are a very sweet daughter-in-law, but based on your posts I
would say that you should tell your in-laws to take the machine to a
computer repair shop (not your local equivalent of BigStoreUSA). A
professional will be able to retrieve any data if that is necessary and
diagnose the issue.

Please ignore the postings about Linux. First of all, John Bailo doesn't
know anything about Linux - he posts ridiculous questions showing his
ignorance in the SuSE Linux newsgroup. Second of all, with absolutely
no offense meant to you, someone who doesn't know how to change the
boot order in a computer isn't going to be able to install Linux.

Best of luck,

Malke

 

[Winux P]

Stacey,

Don't know how to solve your issue. I'd want to ask if you're able to get in
selecting Safe mode with command prompt? If you can you'll have a better
chance of recovering data in case you'll need to re-install. In the command
type in explorer.exe and you'll get the typical safe mode look and feel.

-Winux P

:I was asked to help my inlaws with a PC that has a problem.
:
: Power on and it comes up with the selections last known good and safe mode
: or normal. No matter what you choose its start to come up then goes right
: back to a reboot.
:
: Any ideas?