How My Dual Boot became a Single Boot (Linux)
From: Popeye 'Bailo' Doyle (jabailo_at_earthlink.net)
Date: 03/07/04
- Next message: ntee: "rise of nations"
- Previous message: GR: "runtime error 200"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Date: Sun, 07 Mar 2004 06:24:27 GMT
All I wanted was to play Tux Racer...yeah, and Halo too.
That's it. Is it so hard to ask?
And now I can...but in the process, I creamed Windos 2000.
Here's how it happened.
My new PC has onboard video, but after trying to obtain a 3D driver and also
seeing piss poor performance with Windos games ( GTA Vice City and Halo ) I
decided to be a gamer and get a high end ( for me ) card. A friend of mine
recommended the Radeon ATI 9200. Here's how it went:
BIOS:
Luckily the motherboard ( ASROCK ) had a fairly painless process for
switching, but at first I only did one of the two steps. I set the video
to Add-On AGP ( the onboard is a virtual AGP of some sort and in theory has
3D support, but the Linux drivers are still all in dev ). Ok, I reboot,
Linux first.
LINUX:
Suse recognizes the new hardware and throws me into Sax2 and says it found
new hardware. My mouse wasn't working so I couldn't make any selections.
I thought the system was hung so I did a hardboot. During the boot I
notice I pulled the cord out and pushed it back in.
System reboots, goes to the line prompt. Guess it didn't like being booted
in midstream. Ok. /init 3/ then /sax2/ . It says my monitor needs to
be configured. That was a bug-a-boo in the past, but someone from
a.o.l.suse helped me figure it out by adding an entry for my monitor, so I
selected that. I check out the video card and it had selected some AGP
generic setting. I found there was a Radeon 9000 but not a 9200, so I
gambled with the 9000. I selected 3D support and it threw some alert
about /drivers are experimental...blah blah/.
Save and exit sax. startx. Great. Started Tux Racer. It says that I
don't have 3D support. *WTF!* Ok, back to Yast/Sax. For some reason the
3D button wasn't checked. Check. Save. Exit. I decide to reboot for
good measure.
Ok. Back in. Tux Racer works. Armagetron works great. Not only that but
I think the onboard VGA was dragging down my whole system as KDE is a hell
of a lot snappier.
Reboot. grub. Windows.
WINDOS 2K Pro:
Well, this is not as happy a story. After booting into Windos it went into
VGA low resolution mode. I expected worse, so I was happy when it
recognized my ATI 9200 as needing to be installed. Oddly, it wanted to use
its driver in /windows/system32 and not the CD driver which it said was
incompatible/ with Windows 2000.
Reboot. It goes back into VGA mode. Mmmmmm. Ok, let's try that again.
I check the video card in the Hardware device manager. It shows two cards.
A vga as primary, and the Radeon 9200 as /secondary/. I guess that the
onboard VGA is still alive and that's blocking the 9200. So I select VGA
and disable it.
Reboot. BIOS.
I was reading the ASROCK motherboard manual for the K7VM2 this morning in
preparation for the install. Then I remembered there were two settings in
the BIOS that controlled the video. The second was the onboard VGA memory.
To get rid of the onboard video it had to be set from 32MB to 0. Cool.
Done. Boot. Grub. Windows.
Ok, first the little white vertical bars show. Then the W2K Pro screen.
When the progress bar finishes what does it do -- IT SPONTANEOUSLY
REBOOTS !!
Hold on. Let's see that again..........grub. Windows.......REBOOT.
Yep, it won't load. Hokey-Dokey, thank God there's /Safe/ mode, right?
*Wrong*. After quickly hitting the F8 for Safe Mode, it does the same
thing! Spontaneous reboot.
Well, I guess I don't even have to say it, do I? Ease of configuration:
Linux vs. Windows 2K ? Linux just slammed Windos to the mat!
- Next message: ntee: "rise of nations"
- Previous message: GR: "runtime error 200"
- Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ]
Relevant Pages
|
