"Boot Failed" I can barely get off square one

[Jayski1980]

Im trying to install Redhat 7.3 on my i1200 thinkpad. I have no floppy drive attached. I've been trying to install through my cd drive. I changed the bios settings so that it boots from the cd rom first. An all black screen pops up with the words "BOOT FAILED" and the comp freezes. I have to restart. WHats the problem? I'm trying to figure this one out because I dont ahve a floppy drive and am not looking forward to buying jsut for this. The cd's, by the way, came with a linux for dummies book, so there weren't any problems with a download or mistakes made burning the cds or whatever. ANy help would be great.

[mdwatts]

Can you try using another pc (desktop or laptop) to at least test the installation cd?

You don't have to install on the test pc, but just test to see if the installer does indeed work.

[sol-dude]

Two suggestions/questions:

1. Buy or get SuSE Linux. It is better at dealing with different hardware.

2. How much memory do you have in your system? If it is an old one with only 32 mb or something like that, add more ram.

Caldera used to fail like that with me because of issues like that.

[Jayski1980]

I've heard of Redhat being installed on my type of laptop, but I haven't come across any posts of people with laptops having this problem. I have 64 megs of RAM, which should do the trick. THe CD works in my friends comp. IN mine, as soon as the drive reads the cd, it kinda clicks or makes a few quick attempts to read the cd and then says "boot failed." Sooo frustrating.

[mdwatts]

Sounds to me like a hardware problem (your cdrom).

Do other bootable cd's work in the cdrom?