Troubles installing ReactOS 3.0

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hjind
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Troubles installing ReactOS 3.0

Post by hjind »

Am totally new to ReacTOS and i have 2 questions

1)

I have an older lappy i would like to run TOS before i decide on it. every time i try to install i get this message

FAILED TO READ SUPER BLOCK
OK

then it leads to

FAILED TO READ THE BOOT SECTOR
OK

then to

UNABLE TO LOCATE BOOT SECTOR
OK

i formatted this HD afresh and can't seem to get past that. this L/P runs XP, WinME, Win98 just fine.

here's the details
333MHz AMD-k6-2
256mb ram,4GB HD
has bootable cdrom floppy and of course floppy

2)

also is there somewhere i can download R ver 2.9 as i read ver 3.00 is not finalised there4 not stable? or ver 3 is ok it should do just fine?

p/s i also have the ultimate boot disk should anything on it be recommended.
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Jaix
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Re: TROUBLE INSTALLING ReacTOS 3.0

Post by Jaix »

hjind wrote:Am totally new to ReacTOS and i have 2 questions

1)

I have an older lappy i would like to run TOS before i decide on it...
...I formatted this HD afresh and can't seem to get past that. this L/P runs XP, WinME, Win98 just fine...
Well, is it complaining about the CD or the HD?
If it's the HD the first thing that you really need to check if the partition it formatted as FAT/FAT32, these are the only two partition formats it supports.

If it's the CD try to see if you can burn another bootable CD and get it to boot, some cheap CD:s isn't bootable in some CD-readers, in that case get a better CD to burn the image to.

PS. You burned an CD-image to the CD and not just the file to the CD right?

hjind wrote:2)

also is there somewhere i can download R ver 2.9 as i read ver 3.00 is not finalised there4 not stable? or ver 3 is ok it should do just fine?

p/s i also have the ultimate boot disk should anything on it be recommended.
Here you can find many of the SVN builds that you can play around with:
http://svn.reactos.org/iso
trailboss
Posts: 20
Joined: Sat Dec 02, 2006 3:44 am

I too havin install problems

Post by trailboss »

I was able to get 3.0 loaded,,,somewhat,,,well it asks for drivers on the load and when it can not find them and I click finish, it will freeze, but I rebooted and this time I let the driver window stay and was able to ope games and browser and everything seems ok, but I did run the install for drivers and it freezes every time. I think your OS is going in the right direction as I can feel the speed and it's small. Is there any way to get it working or is it because my hardware has not support. Without my mouse working, I can't play with it.
thanks
Trailboss
Z98
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Post by Z98 »

A bit more information is needed. Specifically, what piece of hardware is the driver being looked for.
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Jaix
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Post by Jaix »

I would advice you to try nithly builds of the trunk until you find one that doesn't hang while installing the driver, but be aware that some drivers isn't supported under ROS yet, but then just press cansel on that driver request.
trailboss
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Post by trailboss »

thats exactly what it's doing. I click all the cancels and after the last cancel it will freeze, but if I don't click on the last one, I can minimize it and the OS works.
thanks
Trailboss
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Jaix
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Post by Jaix »

trailboss wrote:thats exactly what it's doing. I click all the cancels and after the last cancel it will freeze, but if I don't click on the last one, I can minimize it and the OS works.
thanks
Trailboss
That's strange, it doesn't use to behave like that on a cansel...
Perhaps we can understand it easier if you tell us what hardware/vm, build, etc. you have.

Then again I would advice you to try nithly builds of the trunk until you find one that doesn't hang while installing the driver.
trailboss
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Post by trailboss »

I have the 0.3.0 version and my computer is AMD 1800 with 384 ram Nvidia sound card and a US robotics modem with sound jack on it. Everytime I load it, the same happens.

Also is the base for ReactOS Unix or linux? I know it's open source or GPL or something.
thanks
Trailboss
Z98
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Post by Z98 »

ReactOS is based on neither. It is a from scratch kernel that's designed to be compatible with NT. And since it's from scratch, a lot of things have to be implemented and thus it's missing things.

I'm making a guess, but it might be the modem that's messing with ROS. That or the sound.
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Jaix
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Try QEmu or VMWare then.

Post by Jaix »

Well, it might be a hardware problem with either of your hardwares in your computer, I would like to advice you to try it from either QEmu or VMWare. To see if it works and then go from there.
trailboss
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Post by trailboss »

Why would I need to use Qemu or VMware? I also don't know what they do? Or how to use them, i'm a newbie to linux this year.

If the base is not linux, what is the core? Is it a kernel? Is it DOS? I'm not a programmer, I was just wondering whats under the hood? It's fast, as I can feel the speed, but there is not alot with the download base, why is that? If made for windows apps can run on it, why not put some of the free apps on the ISO?
thanks
Trailboss
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Jaix
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Post by Jaix »

trailboss wrote:Why would I need to use Qemu or VMware? I also don't know what they do? Or how to use them, i'm a newbie to linux this year.

If the base is not linux, what is the core? Is it a kernel? Is it DOS? I'm not a programmer, I was just wondering whats under the hood? It's fast, as I can feel the speed, but there is not alot with the download base, why is that? If made for windows apps can run on it, why not put some of the free apps on the ISO?
thanks
Trailboss
VMWare and QEmu is a virtual computer on top of a usual OS that for example makes it possible to run Linux from Windows at the same time. It makes a virtual PC that you can use just like a real computer. The good thing is that it emulates a limited number of hardwares so even odd hardwares can look like standard ones. This makes it possible to us hardware still not supported by ReactOS.

ReactOS is like build like windows, but it's not windows. The ReactOS project has build up a windows-like system from scratch.

It's not a lot i the download base because it is just developed, but it will grow as times goes by.

There may come CD:s with a lot of apps in the future, but now it's just a waste of time and bandwidth to include to much on the CD, remember many still uses a modem to access the internet.
trailboss
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Post by trailboss »

ReactOS is open source, can a person get the source and modify it, or even change things to their needs and or re-distribute it under a different name? Is it just like most all linux distro's in that regard?
thanks
Trailboss
florian
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Post by florian »

It is open source and you can change things and redistribute it but as far as I know redistributions are not that popular amongst some developers and many users. At least I was always *#! off by all those Linux distros and didn't know which one to choose. Furthermore as long as being an alpha OS it wouldn't make much sense to start an own ReactOS distro.

But in future who knows?
Z98
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Post by Z98 »

There's a major difference between ReactOS and Linux distros. The development model of ROS is far closer to the BSDs than any Linux distro. ROS is producing a complete operating system, while Linux distros are simply repackaging the kernel, various utilities, programs, and adding their own customizations. It's because Linux is just a kernel that people can do this. You don't see hundreds and hundreds of BSD distributions. There are a few major ones, like Free, Open, and Net, and a few others like Dragonfly and PC. Of the minor ones, most are specialized builds for specific tasks such as a router and only PC-BSD or Desktop-BSD can be considered distros comparable to Linux distros.

While yes in the future someone might make a server edition of ROS by adding OpenLDAP, Apache, MySQL, etc, or a media center edition by adding some media center program, these are less like distros and more like the diversification Microsoft itself has done with its NT line. So keep that in mind before talking about distros. The likelihood of differences at the kernel level is unlikely for any ReactOS edition, since the kernel is already integrated with the other utilities and subsystems.
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