I am trying out Freespire and when I attempt to install I receive the following:

Fatal: CD search Failed. Type exit to reboot

upon typing in "exit" there are several errors

bad super block on /dev/cloop0... wrong fs type... mount dev/shm does not exist
Kernel panic- no syncing: Attempted to kill init!

At this point the computer locks up and I must do a hard shutdown.

I have tired several discs. Burning from Windows with Nero.. ISO burner.. Alcohol 120%

None of the discs work. I formated the computer I am attempting to install it on as ext3.

The oddest thing is, when I attempt to install it on a VMware machine on Windows, the install
works perfectly.



Any suggestions? Thank you.

You don't format computers, you format partitions on media (in this case, hard drives). It is best not to format the install partitions anyway - don't even partition the drive... leave empty space. The linux installer will do all that for you.

The first error looks like the installer cannot see your CD-drive. What kind of drive is this? Motherboard? Can you get a live distro to work?

The errors after that one will be the result of not seeing the cd drive.

You could try starting the cd iso from the hard-drive.