Dear All,
I have recently had some pretty major hardware failiures in my system. Anyway I have replaced the faulty components and rebuilt the software starting with windows.
When I tried firing up Linux for the first time after the disaster it would not boot, probably because the disks have been re arranged and there are more of them, the CD ROM has been replaced and the Windows hdd is new but the Linux disk has not been altered or damaged (as far as I know) by the disaster.
I then tried to re install Linux from scratch. The problem is that YAST has suddenly become very very slow. When I installed it before it seemed to run at a reasonable speed, a full installation of default software plus office took a couple of hours.
The new CD ROM is a Samsung 52 speed and I now also have a Lite-on CD Writer on the same IDE interface. YAST now takes about 15 to 20 minutes just to get to the language selection screen. Later on when it is installing packages one could go away and make a cup of tea between the loading of one package and the loading of the next. On sunday night I started at 7pm and by 12 midnight it was only 9% of the way through so I gave up. I have tried with various DMA settings and with no DMA, it makes no difference.
When used under windows the CD ROM is very fast, much faster than the old one. Windows reports no problems with any of the hardware. When a package is loaded under Linux the file seems to be loaded very fast but then it just sits there laughing quietly to itself for long time before actually doing anything with it.
Any suggestions, comments?
Regards
Paul J. MIller