PocketMatrix

Okay, I installed lycoris. Bad choice, I know, but mandrake didnt seem to be working and i wanted to try something to see if i could install anything, as my ibm is very specific about hard drive installations.

Well, it created the new partitions, and Lycoris is running, but it cant connect to the internet or run programs at all. So Im running Knoppix, the version live off the cd (no install nessary), but i still cant run windows, because i get a boot error because it cant mount the lycoris partitions. I dont want lycoris... can somebody please tell me some way to get rid of the linux partitions so windows will run?

In the long run, can somebody suggest a free linux partition manager or bootable dos partition manager? Your help would be greately appreciated... my comp is totally out of it... it thinks y is z and z is y, and i cant use apostrophes or question marks... i had to copy the ? out of the emoticon...

How far does mandrake's install go? Does the installation CD even boot? You're trying the newest version (9.1), right?

Mandrake's installer comes with a reasonable partition manager. I think it's good enough... personally, I use fdisk, but AFAIK that kills any old partitions so it might be useless for you. It's also easy to screw up if you don't know what you're doing. At least fdisk comes with every linux distro.

To be honest, I don't think there are any good free partition managers, especially ones for DOS. Seriously, try the Mandrake one, it really should be enough. Or at least try installing Redhat 9... maybe that will get you somewhere.

What do you mean by "my ibm is very specific about hard drive installations"? Can you expand on that? My Thinkpad 600 boots everything I give it just fine, no problems whatsoever. Are you aware of your TP's limitations (did you read them somewhere else?), or is something just not working for you? Did you configure LILO/GRUB properly?

Basically, try to give more details as to what's not working... Mandrake and your Thinkpad should be working just fine.

Oh, and another thing, if you care about your Windows partition and don't want it to die, be careful around partition managers.

ha ha ha

too funny.