safety and speed of operating systems nick?

Darren · Post by **Darren** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 9:51 pm

OK, sounds ok then, constant CD and HD activity

I'm putting it on Helens laptop, at 700mhz should fair better than xp?

Thanks
Darren

simon · Post by **simon** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:11 pm

Are you formatting your hard drives before installing - or just going for it? I'm going to try Ubuntu on the old laptop this weekend, so just wondered.

Darren · Post by **Darren** » Thu Jul 12, 2007 10:13 pm

I formatted mine with windows first but should have prob done it with Partition magic with a linux format?

Prob why the install is taking so long. Been 2hrs so far.

Paul Barker · Post by **Paul Barker** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 7:24 am

No I didn't format first, what would be the point? When installing anew os surely it would start by making a suitable platform for itself out of your hard disk, it would know best what that should be.

simon · Post by **simon** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:40 am

Only wondered because of the difficulties you had both had with the install. I think Nick made some comment earlier on in the thread about clean installs too.

Doesn't sound like it makes too much difference, though I was a bit concerned that if I formatted the hard drive first there might not be any software on the pc that would know what to do with a cd if inserted in to the drive, let alone install a new OS. Last time I installed an OS I had to start with a floppy. Guess things have moved on since!

Darren · Post by **Darren** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 9:05 am

FWIW my install didn't work,

I'm going to try another CD rom unit. Files were incompleate and it wouldn't run.

Post by **Nick** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 9:20 am

Doesn't sound like it makes too much difference, though I was a bit concerned that if I formatted the hard drive first there might not be any software on the pc that would know what to do with a cd if inserted in to the drive, let alone install a new OS. Last time I installed an OS I had to start with a floppy. Guess things have moved on since!

As long as the PC can be set to boot from CD, and most from the last decade should be able to do that. The CR created is bootable so it runs from there. Normally the boot process is handled by the bias which is on ROM so doesn't involve the disk.

In the worst case, you can produce a set of boot floppies for most Linux distributions anyway.

Darren · Post by **Darren** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 9:31 am

[quote="simon". Last time I installed an OS I had to start with a floppy. Guess things have moved on since![/quote]

Blimey, that must have been a while ago?
The last time I booted an os with floppies it was DOS...mind you I'm still doing that occasionally

ed · Post by ed » Fri Jul 13, 2007 11:14 am

Oh Nick, what have you done....a whole army of converts in just a few days......

a small piece of advice which may be of some use....I believe the ubuntu downloads come complete with a disk check on the menu if you are just running from cd......if you plan to install then run the disk check first to make sure it is all there.

If you are having probs with a down loaded install then the formal versions are only £3 or so.

another alternative if you just want to find out what all the fuss is about is DSL, damn small linux, which is much smaller and consequently quicker to download....I'm not sure what the gui is tho, but from memory its much the same as gnome....

just my tuppence

Ed

simon · Post by **simon** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 1:16 pm

Thanks Nick, I'll make sure I check the BIOS before doing something I regret.

Darren, yep, either 98 or even 95. So far (everything crossed) I haven't had to rebuild XP (I've done it now...)

Ed, I think many of us have considered it but have needed a push to try it. I'm not considering it for the main PC (yet anyway) as there's just too much involved at this stage. And there's a lot to be said for a system that work, even if it works badly

Paul Barker · Post by **Paul Barker** » Fri Jul 13, 2007 8:35 pm

Yes it's nice and cosey to have a pc that delays for 20 seconds before doing anything in the first five minutes of use.

These Linux things are dead boring, you get all your work done before XP has responded to your first command.

simon · Post by **simon** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:01 pm

Hmmm. I've downloaded 7.04 Standard, and verified the disk no problem. I've created a Win98 startup disk and used this to format the hard drive. Then I set the first drive to boot from as the cd but get an "Invalid system disk" error. And now it won't boot from the floppy either.

Now I remember why I leave computers alone when they're working. Got to go out now but it looks like I've got some forum trawling to do later!

Post by **Nick** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:19 pm

Make sure you burnt the CD to create a bootable disk.

Darren · Post by **Darren** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 2:55 pm

Go Back into the bios when booting up and tell it to boot to floppy.

Press F2 or F12 or whatever comes up on the screen to get into the bios.

Post by **Nick** » Sat Jul 14, 2007 3:20 pm

Worst comes to the worst Simon, you know where I live.

What you normally used to have to do to boot Linux was create a linux boot set, I will have a look at the ubuntu site to see if this still does that.

audio-talk

safety and speed of operating systems nick?

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