Ive just got a sony vaio pcg c1xd, for free from a friend.

Its the perfect size for just quick browzing etc, but its very limited in resources.

Pentium II @ 400Mhz
64Mb built in sdram (noi expansion here )
6gb hdd

What would be a good distro to stick on this machine (i have an external cd drive). Im running xubuntu on it atm but this is veeeery slow. I tried installing puppy but it wouldnt install grub properly on the disk…

Also should i replace the noisy 6gb 4200 rpm disk with a 16gb cf card? will this be slower or faster?

I had Windows XP Professional and Suse Linux 10.1 "installed”–dual boot. I followed a tutorial showing me how to uninstall Linux by means of deleting partitions. Hence, drive G was created. But then when I restarted a my computer I could boot into windows because of, as I now know, grub. So I reinstalled Linux. Well! I found another tutorial telling me to do that same thing–so now I have a drive T as well as a G–and that I could then merge those partitions. So I downloaded this program: . It was the only one I could find that had a free trial and was a .exe installer file. Right, so I was forced to restart my computer . . only I could not, due to grub. So I reinstalled Linux, and now I have more partitions than I started with. How can I merge them so I only have a drive D and C (plus the removable ones) and uninstall SUSE linux? I do not have an installer CD for XP because it came pre-installed. And I can’t remember my SuSE username and password. Can any one please explain all this to me, step by step, slowly(!) and in plain English because I’m stupid and even now I barely know what I’m talking about. I’ve looked and looked and looked for tutorials and either I can’t understand them, or they don’t fit my situation. Well, before I got to the part where I put in my username and password and such–that is, right after the installation–it booted me back to the main menu and THEN took me back to the grub boot screen. Then my computer restarted myself. Just as it shut off, I pulled out the SUSE linux dvd, then as it was starting up, I hit the system recovery key–f10–on the compaq startup screen. This has never worked, but I tried, nearly out of habit. My key pressing went ignored. The grub boot screen started up-now, here’s where mine is rather unusual (at least I think it is–it didn’t look like this the first time I installed linux–this is my third time to install it):

Suse Linux 10.1
windows 1
windows 2
Floppy
Suse Linux 10.1 in safe mode.

At least, this is how I remember the menu . . My memory really is terrible. Now, normally to log onto Windows I have to use windows 2–windows 1 just takes be back to the boot screen. But I thought, might as well, and opted for windows 1. I was then taken to the Windows System Recovery console. I went throught the process . . . it kept my old programs, restored my default settings, brought back all of my OLD bookmarks (from last year) and plugins for firefox. . . . The partitions were still split up the same, but with different names. I’m scared to restart again and see what happens.

Is it possible to readjust the color depth of redhat kernel for example to 16-bit from the GRUB or boot up kernel one step more and my system gets dammed.
Thanks

I recently reinstalled windows on my computer splitting it into 2 partitions, shortly before installing mandriva/mandrake on the second half of the disk. Everything was going smoothly, but this is my first time installing linux, and something must have gone wrong. I think I must have forgotten to install grub or something, because there’s no option to boot into windows XP. This is my 3rd time reformatting, and my 5th time reinstalling, so please don’t ask me to start from scratch. =_=

This is the most frustrating thing in the world. Could someone please tell me how to install and set up grub/lilo?

Thanks in advance.

Dual boot with windows, The grub installer when the system boots does not pause for long enough for me, I want to make it take longer does anyone know how?

About a year back I divided my hard drive into 3 drives with 24 GB, 14 GB and 42 GB. I installed Linux on the 14 GB partition and now the partition is no longer available through Windows XP.
I’ve got no idea if I’m using LILO or GRUB. I can’t seem to figure it out.
I want to get that memory back to Windows by uninstalling Linux.
Can anyone please point me to a site, or please explain how that’s done?

Thanks in advance.

is it possible to install debian without a usb or cd drive at all? Just purely install from the hard disk using grub and grml to boot the iso?

If I login with linux, its good. When I try to run a boot cd for windows, the grub loader overrides BIOS!!! What am I gonna do. Its urgent!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have already tried with winxp bootable cd. But after the message" setup is now configuring your hardware.." screen goes black and never returns.

Help plz
Somehow GRUB has been deleted. I have tried with xp-sp2

Here’s the situation… I’ve got two seperate drives, both with a full-blown operating system installed, both fully functional when plugged into the the appropriate IDE cable as "Drive C" or "hda" respectively.

Mandriva is using LILO… in the master boot record of it’s drive.

Adding Windows to the bootup options menu and pointing it to the Windows drive installed on a separate IDE cable, as hdc… does NOT work.

How to proceed at this point without completely destroying either installation. If I have to wipe and reinstall Windows, that’s acceptable. But re-installing Mandriva at this point is NOT an option… just way to much data and add-in software at this point… it would take me DAYS to recover.

I notice in the Mandriva Linux Control Center that you can specifiy a different "Boot Device". What would happen if I changed that to "/dev/hdc", let it save it’s data, then shut down and switch the drives around?
News… one round-about approach that works, though it’s not that convenient…

Currently the Mandriva drive is on the mainboard’s primary IDE cable… the Windows drive is on the secondary cable.

If I go into the BIOS and disable the primary IDE, Windows will boot and function normally. And I get the added benefit of knowing that Windows will in no way be able to mess with the MBR (Master Boot Record) on the Linux drive. Which is the whole reason I wanted Windows on it’s own drive to begin with, instead of just a partition.

It’s not the most convienient solution… ideally I’d still like a boot-up menu for Mandriva/Windows using LILO or Grub. But until then, at least tweaking the BIOS is better than having to go into the box and switch the cables around. {grin}

I had suse Linux and vista home premium dual booted,but i decided that i didnt want to dual boot linux, so i went into hd management and deleted my linux partitions.Now i restarted my pc and it just says Grub Loading… boot error 115 or something. I also tried to install suse again to use my uncollated space but it had an error! WHAT DO I DO?!?Please Help out!