Mandrake 9.0 Help Please

[Dcypher]

This is pissing me off, i downloaded the 3 iso images of mandrake 9.0 and burned them to a cd. Then i had to make a floppy cause it wouldnt boot from the cd-rom drive so i did it and it worked i got into the installation at the first screen and pressed enter. Then it brings up some crappy looking dos screen that looks nothing like it says it should on the site. So i go through with it anyway and i select cd-rom to install from and it searches and cant find the disc. It comes up with a message saying This is not a linux installation disc would you like to retry yes-no-back. So 2 questions..1 why doesnt it give the the nice looking installation screen, and 2 how come its not detecting the cd's properly.

[red_over_blue]

Did you select the CDRom as the primary boot source in the BIOS?

If not, while your computer is booting (at the very start), it should say something like "press delete to enter bios". Press delete a few times, usually right after the memory test, and you will enter the bios.

Find the place where you can select what you want to boot from, and place the CDRom in the primary position.

Also, disable Plug and Play... this is very important!

Save the settings and exit the bios, the computer will reboot and look to the CD first to boot from.

Try that and reply with the results.

[Dcypher]

Right ok where do i disable plug and play....if its in the bios i went through that 3 times and couldnt find it :(

[mdwatts]

If you created the bootdisks from your installation cd, then I would imagine the cd's have been created properly.

Could you please tell us a little about your hardware and configuration?

[Dcypher]

Ok, im running windows xp, p42.0ghz, 256ddr, geforce 4 mx 440, whatever else doesnt really matter does it? By configuration you mean...

[Dcypher]

This may help too... i downloaded the redhat 8 iso's and burned them, made the disks, started up the installer and the exact same thing happened. I can only think that it would be something i did wrong, or something about my system thats either not compatible or is messed up.

[Rickdog]

When you burn installation cd isos, they have to be burned as bootable disk, (at least the first one) select el torito, it works for me. download md5sumer from c/net downloads or whereever, and check the md5sums.

Put the install disks into your windows box and look at them. If all you see is a bunch of machine code gibberish, they weren't burned correctly. You should see the Redhat files, etc.

Use the md5sumer or similiar program to generate md5 sums of the iso downloads and check them against the md5 sums from the source, usually where you downloaded them from. If they don't match, you will just make coasters.

[Dcypher]

My brother tried the redhat discs on his computer and it worked fine he has his up and running so the files are fine and burned correctly...

[vze4gmkk]

It's probubly in something like "Intergrated Preperals" and it might say like "PNP OS Installed : X
(where X is yes or no)

Just in case you cared

My CDs were corrupt the first time but in that case it stopped at Loading program into memory..."

[Vialli]

Hey, Dcypher,

Your brother tried the REDHAT discs and they worked fine.

So are you sure that your brother installed with the same discs as you did? (since in the beginning you said the ISO images are MANDRAKE 9.0)

I wonder if the discs you used are burned correctly, there is no need to make an installation floppy disk to boot (it's okay anyway if you like to). Change the boot sequence in BIOS isn't hard for you.

[Dcypher]

I used the same disks he used to install redhat on my system and it didnt work. But i would rather have mandrake than redhat