install help

Hello viaticus, I think you need to ":fdisk /mbr" and then reinstall grub. Search Google: fdisk + mbr

Viaticus, you probably have a bad CD. You should not normally drop directly to a grub> prompt. Can you please provide more details? Such as exactly which version of Mepis are you trying to load? Where did you get the disk, or did you download it from? If you burned the disk, you may need to burn a new one at a slower speed.

Also, please provide more information on your laptop: make, model, cpu speed, amount of memory, size of screen, size of hard drive.

With all that stuff then we can better provide you with some instructions

Jon

The version is 3.4.1.rc1
Downloaded it from http://ftp.wustl.edu/pub/distributions/mepis/

I will try to burn it at a slower speed.

Laptop is a Toshiba Tecra A2
CPU?
Memory 512
Screen 15"
HD 40GB

I hope this will help

check the md5sum too
98f7e41c831edf260faa89331bf16140 SimplyMEPIS_3.4-1.rc1.iso

Checked the md5sum - ok, I reinstalled Win XP and then tried again, this is very frustrating - Ubuntu justed loaded when I tried - am i doing something wrong?

viaticus, good that you checked the CD. In your last post, what did you "tried again"? Are you able to run the Live CD OK (not install)? Do you get to the login screen where you can choose to log in as user demo or root or is the Live CD version of Mepis crashing and taking you to the grub> menu?

Your hardware is new enough and you have enough disk and RAM, so that's not a problem. Let's take it a step at a time to be sure that the CD is OK and that it works with your setup.

Please post back the results of using the Live CD format and then we can take it to the next level: Installation

Jon

Same thing happened to me when I tried to install 3.3.2-1.rc1. The liveCD booted and ran fine. The install went fine. Then when I rebooted, the machine stopped at grub - as if it couldn't find vmlinuz.

Then I rebooted the liveCD and looked in my partitions. Everything seemed to be there. It just wouldn't boot. The same thing happens when I try to install PClinuxOS.

Mepis 3.3.1-1 installs and runs and boots with no problems at all. So I just use that and

apt-get dist-upgrade

---------------------------------------
Bob L Hunter
bicycle tourist, bookworm, linux newbie
---------------------------------------

viaticus, I agree with Bob on this one. If the 3.4.1-rc1 distribution does not work for whatever reason, I would recommend using the current, stable release of Mepis, which is 3.3.1-1. I am using that on a number of different computers and servers. The 3.4.1-rc1 is a test release and has not yet been "blessed".

Also, if 3.3.1-1 DOES LOAD while 3.4.1-rc1 DOES NOT LOAD, then it's an indication of problems with the release rather than your particular computer.

Jon

Hi

Thought I should let you know that I have experienced what seems to be a simiilar problem ( http://www.mepis.org/node/8616 ): the boot process ends at the GRUB prompt.

All other live distros I have tried have booted up first time, so I find it frustrating that MEPIS has this problem.

Thanks

ps