PocketMatrix

I just got an HP a250n as a trade-in. My old computer stopped working so my Best Buy warranty let me trade it in for a new computer. As soon as I got it I decided to install a Gigabyte of Ram and Radeon 9800 Pro graphics card, just to give it some extra power. I also upgraded to Windows Professional as Home Edition doesn't have server tools. Now to the problem at hand, I tried to install Red Hat and even Topigoilinux but it wouldn't let me install it on the HDD. I even tried turning protection off. It still won't let me. It also gives me bogus errors about my HDD when it turns out to be error free after 5 scans. I really wanted to get a small Linux system running on my HP. Does anyone know how to disable the protection or if there is a place where the fix is as maybe it is a common error, or is my does my HP have a bad HDD. Their support can stink at Best Buy anyway so; maybe they just wanted to mess around with me.

Thanks,

iLINUX *Running Linux on an old iMAC for fun*

"PS: I might have spelling problems as I am using my Compaq Tablet PC TC1000"

You do have it partitioned properly? Like two, three partitions with one in NTFS for Windows, and one FAT32 for Linux? [I don't know how linux savvy you are so taking it from the basics]

I recently installed SuSe linux as dual-boot on several systems; it works OK if you already have a FAT32 partitioned drive [like you'd have when running Win 98] , but if you're running XP with NTFS, you'll have a bitch of a time reformatting that HD safely - I learned that one the hard way.

Telling us the specific errors you're having would help..

Make sure that the BIOS has any settings that disallow access to the MBR or partition table turned off (usually "protect MBR from virus" or similar).

As Bjorn said, make sure you have a free partition to install onto.

Also, find out what make your HD is and run the corresponding drive fitness test.

I had problems with Linux and one of my IDE RAID cards - it took a while for the drivers to become mature enough to trust. However, that was more a problem of the vendor not supporting their product to any decent degree.

Also, I have "issues" with RedHat 9's stability. On a fresh install both the kernel and glibc needed updating to stop certain things crashing horribly. (Well, they didn't crash as such, that would be too easy - it was the threading library that kept dead-locking itself).

Anyway, if you're not competant enough to boot a root-boot floppy and repair your partition table and/or the boot-loader, then install it on another drive...

Personally I find the linux boot-loader (prefer GRUB these days) much nicer to manage than the Windows equivalent.

"fdisk /mbr" from a boot floppy has also saved me more than once.