Uninstall/Reinstall Question

[DJLischer]

When I installed Mandrake 7.2, I first partitioned the drive into /, swp, /usr, and /home myself then I did an automatic install from that point on. I think I'm getting some problems because of my initial partitioning.

I'm thinking about going back and re-installing Mandrake, but this time letting Mandrake do all the partitioning itself. The only way I know to do that would be to go in Windows fdisk and delete the Linux partition. Then I could reboot from the Mandrake install cd and start from scratch.

Is there a better way to do this?

[Tyr-7BE]

What type of problems? What size are the partitions?
I recommend DiskDrake...easy as hell and nice and graphical for that feel-good point-and-click feeling :D. It should be an option somewhere along the line during a Mandrake install.

[DJLischer]

The first problem occurred when I tried to do the full 1500 MB install. In the very last step (Configure K) I got some error about font 'fixed' not being found and KDE wouldn't load. When I did the recommended 700 MB install everything went fine. Mandrake tech support got back to me and said I should try again without making my own /usr (which I did make using DiskDrake). I've also seen some recommendations on this forum that it's good for newbies like me to keep it simple and use only / and swap.

Lately I've had problems installing the packages staroffice and MuPAD through the Package Manager. I just get messages saying:

"Problems occured [sic] during installation... installation failed"

I thought maybe my problems were related and I'd just start over.