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  #1  
Old January 14th, 2008, 11:18 PM
troy.wooley troy.wooley is offline
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Linux help

I have a compaq presario 1200 laptop that I bought second handed.It had XP PRO on it.When I went online I got an updates notification from microsoft and when I clicked it they put it through a validation check which it failed.I tried to download a keycode tool but again there was a problem. I tried to download XP home edition after removing the partition,setting a new one,and formatting but kept getting a "cant locate file" box asking me if I want to skip this file etc.There was over 60 different files that couldnt be located,eg,sys.,cab.,dll.,jpg.,fon.,htm.,css.,wav. ,).
So after several e-mails back and forth with microsoft,I found in my supply of disks, two disks labeled "Mandrake Linux 8.1". The bottom says "First installation CD (x86) Bootable CD.
Can I Install this as an operating system from windows 98 SE and get rid of windows?(I put on win. 98 to try and upgrade from...haha)Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
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Old January 15th, 2008, 03:09 AM
giradman giradman is offline
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Troy - first welcome to the CTH Forum - plenty of great people here to offer their assitance to you!

Sounds as if you want to basically 'wipe' the HD of your newly acquired 'used' laptop and install a Linux OS - well, there are many options (called 'distros' in the Unix lingo); about 4 months ago, my old IBM laptop's HD died - bought a new Dell and was about to just toss the IBM, but thought that I'd give Linux a try? Bought a new HD replacement, upped the RAM from 256 MB to 512 MB, and w/ an external CD drive installed Ubunto 7.10 - have really been enjoying this experience.

I don't know the specs on your laptop, but my IBM has an 18 GB HD & the RAM mentioned above - Ubuntu works fine w/ that system (there are plenty of other distros requiring less hardware requirements) - I would suggest checking out the Ubuntu Forums - plenty of experienced help there to get you started - good luck!
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Old January 15th, 2008, 06:07 AM
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smurfy smurfy is offline
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Or, in answer to the question you actually asked, yes, you certainly should be able to use Mandrake 8.1 on that old Compaq.

Mandrake of that vintage typically came in 3 CDs but only the first 2 are necessary for an installation.
Provided you have disk 1 and 2, not 1 and 3 you should be good to go.

Provided the laptop is set to boot from CD first, just pop it in and reboot.
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Old January 17th, 2008, 12:00 AM
troy.wooley troy.wooley is offline
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thank you for your suggestions GIRADMAN and SMURFY, it seems that my linux disks has something wrong with it and wouldnt install.So I went and bought a new VISTA operation system and of course it wont install either. My luck with computers suck so I guess I shall go buy a new modern one for use and just play with the lap top. Again, thank you.
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Old January 17th, 2008, 01:07 AM
giradman giradman is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by troy.wooley View Post
thank you for your suggestions GIRADMAN and SMURFY, it seems that my linux disks has something wrong with it and wouldnt install.So I went and bought a new VISTA operation system and of course it wont install either. My luck with computers suck so I guess I shall go buy a new modern one for use and just play with the lap top. Again, thank you.
Troy - sorry to hear about your experience - not sure 'how old' that laptop may be, but doubt that it had the 'innards' to run VISTA. But don't give up on the laptop to run a Linux 'distro' - I'm having a lot of fun w/ my Ubuntu installation on the old IBM laptop described previously; check out the forum link given previously, and determine if you have enough RAM to run a Linux clone - as already suggested, booting from a CD makes the Ubuntu installation pretty easy. Hope to hear more from you on this thread!
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  #6  
Old January 17th, 2008, 01:49 AM
DaveQB DaveQB is offline
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I would suggest to avoid the Mandrake 8.1 install and get something up to date.

I loved Mandrake in that era, it was my distro of choice then, but to really feel what Linux has become..best to grab an up to date on off of linuxquestions.org or linuxiso.org
Kubuntu is my recommendation ;-)
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  #7  
Old January 17th, 2008, 03:44 AM
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smurfy smurfy is offline
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The Presario 1200 was released in 2001 - it is a 6 year old laptop - Celeron 700Mhz, 64MB RAM standard.
Mandrake 8.x or 9.x would be the right vintage for that spec in my opinion.
It will run Ubuntu 7.10 OK, but won't be great without a heap more RAM.
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  #8  
Old January 20th, 2008, 01:02 AM
troy.wooley troy.wooley is offline
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Okay,so I went and found another MANDRAKE LINUX 8.1
There are 3 disks,first and second installation and a supplementary applications CD. My question(s) are this,
do I need an OS such as win. before I can install the linux?
Are these three disks the right ones for installing linux?
I set up the comp. to run cd rom first and restarted it and am getting an invalid system disk message. Should I delete the existing partition and create a new one or should there be any partitions at all? There is 128 MB RAM is that enough? Thanks for any help you all may be able to provide.
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  #9  
Old January 20th, 2008, 04:19 AM
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smurfy smurfy is offline
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1) No, you don't need any O/S installed on the system 1st.
2) Yes, those are the correct disks to install Linux
3) Invalid system disk error message indicates that either you haven't put disk 1 in first or the disk hasn't been created properly as a bootable disk from an ISO image. Where did you get the Mandrake 8.1 disks from?
4) Once in the Mandrake installer, there will be a partitioning set-up tool available.
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