[hammerhead69]

part of me really hopes the box isn't ready for live and it's not something really stupid i've been doing since the beginning, but on the other hand every time i try to install again i desperately hope to see it work (like it did 1st time on my win7 laptop)
oh and as for ending my pain, this has become SUCH a mission it's doing my head in, i trust the guys at this shop and i know they work with linux but i may just take your advise and get them to instal win 7 and be done with it

have a gd wkend and thanks for your time

[toddwv]

ok i'll try again tomorrow and write everything down as i go,
they'll be a lot of writting but i hear what your saying it's impossible for you to have a clue whats going on with such "fussy" info, sorry for wasteing your time

the win7 disc was an original a friend brought round, i wanted to see if it would load up before buying it (even though my friend said it wouldn't pass the activation as it was already activated on his system) but it wouldn't load due to my hd not being ntfs, the rock comes with a 500gb hd but the options to load win7 were only 9.1gb and two hundred and something gig (so i don't know whats happened to the rest of the hd), neither were ntfs so i have no idea whether win7 would work therefore i don't want to purchase it now,
i also changed an 8gb usb stick into ntfs and had this plugged in whilst trying to install win7 again, but this stick wasn't visable in the options.

on another note i'm working near a little shop that have been very helpful repairing pc's in the past and i trust them in there not to rip me off, so unless theres a miracle tomorrow i'll be taking the rock and ubuntu disc and xbmc live disc in there monday and pay them to get it working for me,

fingers crossed i'll be able to send a happy post in a week or so

Don't take these suggestions the wrong way. EVERYONE starts at square one. There is nothing wrong with seeking help. I don't know about others, but I pursued XBMC as both a media center AND a project which means that I wanted to take things apart and learn about the constituent components. Trust me though, I know that it can be frustrating to drop money on something and find that it just doesn't play well.

[hammerhead69]

indeed, i imagined the asrock would work out of the box with xbmc live and by now i'd be messing with skins and folder options and playlists for my music,
as it stands i'm still having to use my boxee box to watch my films on
good job i didn't sell it once the rock turned up!

[toddwv]

indeed, i imagined the asrock would work out of the box with xbmc live and by now i'd be messing with skins and folder options and playlists for my music,
as it stands i'm still having to use my boxee box to watch my films on
good job i didn't sell it once the rock turned up!

Linux keeps copious logs. Once you get an install to the point where you can get to the login, there's a good chance, assuming the network connection is up and running, that you can ssh (secure shell) into the box and pull the logs that way. You can copy the text and post it on pastebin to give everyone a better idea of what is going on.

From Windows, I use a free ssh app called putty (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/).

[hammerhead69]

i tried a new install the XBMCFreak Nuvoton 10.00 v2 version, and what do you know it's worked 1st time,

ok i have no audio yet, but im over the moon to actually have xbmc on my tv screen,

[toddwv]

i tried a new install the XBMCFreak Nuvoton 10.00 v2 version, and what do you know it's worked 1st time,

ok i have no audio yet, but im over the moon to actually have xbmc on my tv screen,

You know, I just cleared my system yesterday trying to work through a prob. It took me 3 times to get a clean install that booted up. I was trying different install options though.

Soundwise, a good place to start is to type alsamixer and make sure your channels are at max. You can use

speaker-test -Dplugurround51 -c6 -twav

to test assuming you have 5.1 sound. If not, the -c option tells it how many channels to test so speaker-test -c2 will run through the left and right speakers.

If neither of these commands are found, install alsa-utils