help plz help insatlling red hat 7.3

hello ppl
i have searched the forums and i still cant get red hat installed.it should install when i reeboot when i have the 1`st disk in but it isnt.i tried reformating my C drive im putting in the command format-c i tried format - C:\ and format c can any 1 tell me the right command to put in? and i know im probably being a pain in the ass because this has been asked a thousand time but i am really stuck and need major help plz ppl no flame`s i really need help ty to every 1 who reply`s i realy do need help

are you trying to boot off of the cd?
if that is the case, did you change the boot order in your bios to read
off of the cd drive first?

Is your computer even trying to boot from the cd? If not the CD is not giving the boot info so it bypasses to the next device. Check the BIOS to see if you have cd boot enabled on your mobo.

my CD drive should boot from the cd automatically but it isnt and i want to delete windows any way and just use redhat but my drive isnt formating am i using the right command ?

OK,
I am assuming that you can't boot from your CD.

Check the bios of the PC to make sure the cd is your 1st boot device. If that does do the trick make the floppy your boot drive.

Then go to another MS PC with a blank formatted 3.5 floppy

After you boot that PC put the cd in the cd drive and the floppy in the floppy drive

Go to the command prompt

At the c:\ prompt type "D:" then "cd\dosutils"

type rawrite

the target drive is a:

the image is d:\images\boot.img The floppy should light up and hpoefully give you a bootable floppy disk.

This floppy should boot your PC, and start the install from the cd.

If the cd is not found with this image, type the "oldcdrom.img" in place of the "boot.img".

netman cheers for replying i dont have another winbloze box and my bios is password protected and the company i got my computer from has shut down and i cant find out the password any other suggestions are more than welcome i have reformated before but forgotten the command

And people wonder why programmers carry a screw driver

OK
unplug the machine
short the jumpers that control the CMOS
if you have the mother boards manual
otherwise pop out the battery and come back in 6 hours
that should put your password into the bit bucket

netman i dont want do go diggin about in the back of my box.shouldnt it just boot from the cd if i reformat what is the right command again i forgot ?

prodikal, I have to agree with netman4ttm, that will clear the cmos to allow you to reprogram it with your needed paremeters.

hey i dont even know what the cmos battery looks like lol bleh look`s like i have no other option cheers for all your responses

Unplug ypur box, open the puter and look for a jumper near the battery that said on the board "lr cmos" it will be a 3 pins connector, numbered 1 2 3 (duh!) and it will be a jumper btwn 2 and 3 (correct me if i'm wrong) what u need to do is switch the jumper to the pins 1 and 2... Wuala!! psswrd gone.
Close everything turn your puter back on, to the bios setup check the boot order and thats it!.
If It doesn't work follow netman's instructions.
:)

prodikal

Lets assume you have a bootable floppy. Any MS os will work

At the a:\ prompt type "fdisk /mbr" that will clear out Linux, NT 2000 and XP
then type fdisk and totally clear your hard drive
do not format since linux will now treat this as a brand new drive.

the format command is format c:\ but I don't think that will work if you are on the c: drive.
THE FDISK will clear the drive use it.

The cmos battery is just like a large watch battery. Not hard to find at all. If you have a 98 boot disk, put that in there and boot off of it (if you can) once you get to the prompt, goto the cd drive and browse your linux disk. Go to the boot section on it (cant remember what it is called) and find the autoboot.bat file. once you are in the same directory as that, just type in autoboot and away you should go.

<edit>Put the jumper back on the first two pins before powering it back up...</edit> Thought I would add that...

Quote:

---

Unplug ypur box, open the puter and look for a jumper near the battery that said on the board "lr cmos" it will be a 3 pins connector, numbered 1 2 3 (duh!) and it will be a jumper btwn 2 and 3 (correct me if i'm wrong) what u need to do is switch the jumper to the pins 1 and 2... Wuala!! psswrd gone.

---

ok heres what i get when i but up from my win 98 boot disk and type fdisk/mbr/
fdisk
your computer has a larger disk space than 512MBthis version of windows includes improved support for large disks resulting in more eficient use of disk over 2 GB to be formatted as a single drive
IMPORTANT:if you enable large disg support and create any new drives on this disk, you will not be able to access you will not be able to able to access the new drives using other operating systems including some versions of windows 95 and NT,as well as earlier versions of windows and MS-DOS.in additiondisk utilities that were not designed explicity for FAT 32 file system will not be able to work with this disk if you need access this disk with other operating systems or older disk utilities
do not enable large disk support........?[Y]

if i click yes i get the folowing options
1.create dos artion or logical dos drive
2.set active partion
3.delete this partion
4.disply partion information

if i choose the option no not to create a large drive i get the same menu what do i do from here ?

OK
fdisk /mbr thats fdisk space /mbr
choose 3 you don't need to create you need to delete

Assuming one drive and one letter C=the whole drive

the commands would be

fdisk /mbr
fdisk
3
delete the partiotions
esc esc esc
a:\
remove floppy & reboot

umm that aint working any other suggestions

First, check this link to a utility that will recover
the BIOS password,

http://www.antionline.com/attachment...tachmentid=444

Then you can go back to the beginning and boot from your CD

Fdisking and formatting your drive at this stage is a waste of
time because the install program on the CD will want to
do it again anyway. That BIOS password is your main problem.
:cool:

prodikal,
Does that mean you still have a Windows 98 PC?
Or that you now have a PC with no OS and you can't boot from the cdrom?
What type of PC are you using for these posts?

it mean`s i still sadly have win 98 netman and ty rc green gonna check out that attatcment

EDIT: rcgreen how do you use the bios password cracker it doesnt seem to work it says the program has allready finished when i start it up ? *im confused*

Hey Prodikal,

You should do just as netman says. You need to clear that BIOS password, so you can set the boot order. Once the boot order is set, the rest is easy...sort of...but that's another post! Go ahead and grab a screwdriver, and yank that cmos battery. Its a circular silvery thing, about 1" in diameter. Pull, wait 6 hours...put it back in, and then enter the BIOS.
Either way, playing around inside your pc would be a nice learning experience for you.

Hope this works for you.
:D

learning expierience lol i opened my box looking for the cmos battery couldnt find it some wires came loose couldnt find out what the problem was my computer wouldnt boot so i punched my wardrope and my hand is swelled up like a baloon i can hardly type :( *oh well guess that was my own personal stupidity* but i dont think i will be opening my box again i still need help *not going to sleep untill red hat is installed *

Here's another program I have used to recover a BIOS password

http://www.antionline.com/attachment...tachmentid=444
:cool:

Quote:

---

Originally posted here by netman4ttm
And people wonder why programmers carry a screw driver

OK
unplug the machine
short the jumpers that control the CMOS
if you have the mother boards manual
otherwise pop out the battery and come back in 6 hours
that should put your password into the bit bucket

---

took the words right out of my mouth. :mad:

My motherboard has a button you can push to clear the setup.
:cool:

their is a clear cmos jumper on your mobo, if you have your manual its 3 pins with a jumper over two, one space, it might be marked (if your lucky)

If not find a proggie called killcmos.exe it clears out the cmos, do it via a Dos mode

The Cmos batter is identical to a watch battery, and you only have to wait 30 seconds (when you case is unplugged) to lose your bios settings, when you return you should get errors about date and checksum errors, then you go in and set it up date/boot order etc.

or you could goto www.bootdisk.com and get a redhat boot disk ( or using rawrite.exe with boot.img in /boot on your linux CD, thats to create a bootable floppy to then get into a red hat setup

hope this helps buddy!
Preep

Some Proprietary motherboards, such as is in most "name brand" computers did not have a conventional "disc type" lithium battery, some have a battery that is soldered on the mobo...such as the Dallas clock battery that was real popular in the 486 and early pentium days, and some packard bells have a battery "box" accessable from the back of the system cabinet, also some IBM brands had the box on the back.

What exactly do you have prodikal ?? :confused:

How about

format c: /q /u

for a quick unconditional format?

Netman's on the right track for fdisking the drive, though I think he missed a step (since you seem to be pretty new to this):

Type the following at the command prompt:

C:\>fdisk /mbr
C:\>fdisk

Within fdisk do the following:
y (to enable large hard disks)
3 (to delete partition(s))

If you are running Windows:

Delete all extended partitions (3)
Delete all secondary (or logical, whatever it is) parititons (2)
Delete the primary partition (1)

Exit the program
Restart the computer

There you go, you now have a completely clear hard disk (unformatted).

This, however, wil not default to starting off of the CD. For that, you will have to enter the BIOS, as everyone else suggested. What you can try, is what Netman suggested here and make the Linux install disks. By default, most computers will default to booting from a floppy before the hard disk, and this will allow you to install Linux without having to change anything in your BIOS. Good luck!

AJ

I am not sure but I read you can delete your BIOS password with debug.

Note: I did not write this, I saved it to a text file a while ago, I forgot where I got it from.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Remove password by manually invalidating CMOS content
When CMOS RAM loses power, a bit is set to indicate this, which should cause the BIOS to detect that the CMOS RAM is invalid and will normally result in the loading of default values. The same results can be obtained by using a simple DEBUG script to invalidate CMOS RAM. This may be much more convenient than shorting pins on a chip in cases where it is possible to boot to a DOS prompt to run DEBUG.Here is a DEBUG script to invalidate CMOS RAM. This should work on all AT / ATX motherboards (XT systems do not have CMOS RAM).
A:\>DEBUG
- o 70 2E
- o 71 FF
- q

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: I believe the numbers are difernt for difernt versions of BIOS

well prodical,
I think ac1d wrote a Tutorial on installing red-Hat 7.3, so i think you should check that out.
Here is the link http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=232394
But if you are not satisfied with that, then i suggest some expert in the chat -Room which i think they will surely help you out. Talk to *Redgore or Hogfly* am sure any of these will definately be of great help to you.
I hope this helps.