Well, this ought to be fun. I have XP on one machine and going to try to set up home networking with Lenny.

I tried service pack 3, I had to format my hard drive and re-load Windows XP pro completely..it sucks! I can't wait to get my hands on Windows 7..hopefully Gates didn't screw the new one up as bad as he did with Windows ME and that abortion they call Vista.
I tried Linux..waiting for the newest version of that for my "other" computer..
Networking should be easy, although SP3 will make it difficult with all the added security and other useless add ons
when I had SP2, I had 8 P.C.'s linked for a lan party..it was awesome! ( thanks linksys )

I like linksys. I have linksys network cards in both machine plus the network card on the motherboards of both machine. Debian 5 and XP both identified easily the linksys cards. I looked at the data on both and it makes sense since they both from cisco. But when I tried with the two 3com cards I had trouble. But the 3com cards were old. I like the plu and play combatibility of the linksys cards. I was having trouble when I had the cable select option on the Samsung hard drive without the coupler pin identifying it as slave with the Maxtor hard drive with the pin in it identified as master. Since I put the pin in it the bios quit making it invisible. I just had a friend make me a crossover cable between the tow computers. But my problem with the full 648 megabyte is that it won't load the lilo or grub installer. The other download I had with the debian loaded the grub loader but no graphical user interface. Now I just had the error message of 15 where the grub isn't loading. Atleast I got past the hard drive issue and I still have internet capabilitity on this XP setup.

Hi,

I'd like to help, I'm quite a dab hand with Debian (it's my distro of choice), but I don't quite understand your problem.

Although I'm used to setting up Samba using the CLI, I'm sure I can help either way.

Thanks,

Chris.

Oh, the problem right now after I got to the bottom of the missing or invisible hard drive in bios - the Samsung one; I have two hard drives on the one that tried to set up with "Lenny". I couldn't setup XP or Lenny. Right now I am writing zeros to both drives; The Samsung 40 gb and the Maxtor 40 gb. The crossover cable worked fine. The DHCP couldn't connect with any of the network interface cards. It was an ISO version that burned fine but it wants to connect to the Internet because it only has the basic operating system devoid of the desktop. I burned the small version and the 648 mb version. The grub loader worked in the small version. Got more in the 648 mb but I think I might still have come with some hard drive problems. Its a Dell Dimension 2350 I am putting Lenny on eventually and I want to cross it over with my Dimension 3000. I was impressed with Lenny - loaded all my motherboard drivers not like XP which you have to have the drivers on disks. I like the stability of Debian. The site even said the smaller version might be a better option. I am not giving up on it just have some hardware issues to get working right. either way if I connect via one computer to another or through the multiple BEC DSL box I will be able to get the updates.

Why are you zeroing your disks?

The 648 MB disk should have a memtest kernel, try booting that and letting it run, also trying re-downloading the ISOs.

Are you trying to dual-boot?

Do you have a router?

Have you tried installing with only on disk connected?

Ta,

Chris.

The whole hard drive size doesn't show up on the Samsung. I tried the memfest kernel and thought it was cool. Really didn't understand it except it showed I had some problems that I didn't understand. I want this computer to stay XP and the other computer to stay Debian. I have a router. It is a Bay Networks with twelve ports. When I tried the only on disk connected the ISO halted on setting up the software. Wouldn't let the usual desktop one would want if one was as Linux ignorant as I am. All the experience I really had with Linux was the class I took in college that introduced Linux as Dos 2. I think downloading another ISO makes sense. I burned the one I had with Nero Rom.

Roy

Lenny is now downloading from the Internet on the other computer. When running the full version it asked me if I had any more disks. I put in the small version. I also put in the nic card that xp had connected to the Internet - the 3Com Tornado. The four port DSL router modem is now working on two computers. It is downloading through the crossover on one nic and downloading through another nic straight through as normal. Success as it is put in the desktop. Strange to me but it is doing it.

I am back at Select and Install software. I had to go back and get rid of NTFS on one drive. I had to select one nic card as primary - the Tornado. That way the new computer I am setting up works alone as a stand alone computer. Lenny recognizes the other nic cards but it wanted a primary. I had to stay with the desktop environment. Want to keep it simple. Had to remember my KISS - Keep It Simple Stupid. With two nic cards on the XP the one on the motherboard has limited connectivity. This is good. The linksys is connecting okay for the XP to act as a stand alone computer. The linksys on Lenny is working as the crossover with the motherboard ethernet. The motherboard ethernet on the XP is basically doing nothing. Well, I really can't say that because I have bridging set up with the windows firewall. Needless to say I am not impressed with the Dell ethernet on both computers. Curious if bridging is going on with Lenny now or if it even has a firewall. Maybe the limited connectivity is like some kind of failsafe of the firewall. That would make sense. Lenny is aware of the crossover I can tell because of the little drag on the XP.

I guess the easiest way to say this is that I have ethernet between the computers and separate Internet for each of the computers. It is good that there is limited connectivity as ethernet between them. It is 100 mb either way. The Internet is 100 mb on both. XP basically doesn't need Lenny and the reverse could be said. I don't need wine on Lenny. I went through that with Ubuntu 7.10. I don't want to go through that, again. It looks like I am going to get past Select and Install software on Lenny. So far so good.

Spoke to soon. Lenny is hung up on Select and Install software. Grub or Lilo not istalling. I have pulled out the crossover cable. It didn't make a difference. Still stuck.

Ran check cd rom on both the small disk of Lenny and the 648 mb version. It said that they were both bad. No wonder. Back to the Debian site. Going for the Debian 4 instead though this time.

If when you ran memtest it said there was a problem, that means you have bad ram, which would explain the installation troubles and if you are using the same machine to burn cd it would screw them up also. If they are being burned another machine, most burning software has has option to verify disc after burn.

Watch out with the dvd/cd burners. I had one working fine...or better that's what I thought,until I tried to install Linux ....I must have wasted over 15 disks, trying all sorts of speeds to burn the cd and ending up with corrupted ones.
Finally I pulled the dvd burner out and I had 2 spare ones, older and more used, but "miracle" - they burned the CD and Linux installed flawlessly.

You might be able to play cds/dvds/ hell, even burn music CDs and not get corruption notes, but try burning an an iso and the trouble shows up.
These new dvd/cd burners have terrible reliability. It has to be said, it's worth to pay more for a higher quality, otherwise you end up buying new ones every 4 months. I'm staying away from blueray for now, I'm fine throwing out a 40 dollar cd burner, but not so fine throwing out a 200 dollar blue ray /cd/dvd burner.

You also said, one of your hard drives didn't show up. Not saying it is, but your bad cd burner might play a role in that too, or you gonna have play around with the jumpers (assuming you got IDE drives), even weird combinations...but as I said, a bad cd burner goes a long way to create all sorts of problems.

I think you might have something there.

http://cdimage.debian.org/debian-cd/5.0.1/i386/iso-cd/

I downloaded that first one at the top. When I ran the integrity test it said it was bad. So I burn the six one from the bottom. It loaded fine until Lenny halted at install the software. Ran the integrity test. It said it was good. Neither grub nor lilo would install. What a pain waiting on those 818 files to finally download from debian.org with ftp. Then tried it with http. Same problem. That gets to me what Atlantis posts next. The Imomega 32 speed just wizzed away without stopping when I ran the three 5.0.1. updates. The smallest download would give you the option to install the addition three updates but when using just one of my cdroms but still it would just give the same message of getting stuck at setting up software. So then I thought I would be smart and dual boot with two cdroms with Ubuntu 7.10 and the kde version of Lenny. Then I got the busybox. Yeah, I got all these burned disks. I really gave Nero rom a workout.

When you run memtest it should run indefinitely until you reboot or shutdown. If it stops for any reason or gives you any kind of error you have some bad RAM. If you have more than one stick, remove one and run the test again, if it passes then the removed stick is bad. If it doesn't and you have three or more sticks repeat process.

Yup. Walmart had some nice Kingston 2gb sticks. I took the Dell certified memory out of the Dimension 2350 and placed them in the Dimension 3000 I am using now. I haven't had any trouble with this computer. I had just bought some value memory at our local computer shop and first tried it on this computer. I got burned out on running the Lenny so tried Windows XP. NTFS was a pain so thought I would play around in DOS. Loaded a real cool MSDOS701 from Vetusware.com and as long as I didn't try to load Windows 3.1 with it is was okay. So I loaded DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 loaded okay. I had the DOS 6.0 and Windows 3.1 on floppies. I am really impressed with Dr.Dos 7.1. I found this program that makes a Windows 3.1 that looks like Windows XP from Caldera.

DOS wow. Why would you want to use DOS? CLI is fun, but you can't use any modern apps with DOS. The reason I could think of would be run old DOS games, but DOSBOX(DOS emulator) works better.

The crossover idea only helped for one reason; It helped Windows One Care 'see' both computers. One Care loaded almost flawlessly onto both machines. It saw the Dell Dimension 3000 hard drives as 'C' and 'D'. Then it 'saw' the Dell Dimension 2350 hard drives as 'E' and 'F'. But then it set the 3000 as a slave to to the 2350. I couldn't get onto the net without the 2350 turned on. Now both computers are loaded with One Care but are stand alone units. I put Lenny back onto the 2350 and the disk took me to the Debian site which was different. The memory problemis gone so I am crossing my fingers. I going to try to load it onto the 2350 unders Windows XP.

I had to take the disk out for it to dual install. Geez, lol.