(Just so you all know)

I have download the 9.2 CDs and I am trying to get them to work with no luck so far. I have tried just the CD itself (how it came downloaded), unpacking the iso and burning that to a CD and try to install, making a boot disk using the rawwritewin and rawwrite, writing the image cdrom.img both using the iso and unpack CD, and using the unpacked straight from window to run the autorun file.

Let me explain what happened in the attempts. The first one just flat out didn't work. It will not boot by itself at all. Here is the error message that I get when I try using the packed and unpackaged CD that I made from the download: "DISK BOOK FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER." So then I tried just with the downloaded file that I burned to CD and the cursor blinks at me for an hour and nothing happens. After reading some docs I thought that it might be that CD-ROM problem, but the CD-ROM still works fine (I have Windows 98 installed on the machine). So then I read some more and I try using the rawwritewin and make the boot floppy using that cdrom.img image. So I can get that to start and I push enter to start the install and then it loads some stuff, finally finishing with the error message: "Please answer... That CDROM disc does not seem to be a Mandrake Linux Installation CDROM. Retry with another disc? Yes. No. Back." Now I don't care if the CD is white, black or green, that is the same error message that I always get. One last thing that I tried is going into Windows 98, running the unpacked CD and the autorun does work. It then ask me what I would like to do, so I say Install Linux and then a message says that Linux will reboot the computer and if you haven't backed-up your data hit cancel to do so. I hit okay and nothing happens at all. I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong and how to fix it. Does anyone know?

And what's this thing about a network install and how do I do it? I do have high speed connection.

P.S. I am sorry about the double post, but I think that I put the other post in the wrong forum

My guess would be that you have misburned the ISO. What do you mean, you "unpacked the ISO and burned it to CD"?

ISOs are compressed images, but they are decompressed during the process of burning with a "burn image" command in a CD-burning program such as Nero or EZCD Creator. If you have unpacked them to data using something like WinISO or ISOBuster, then burned them, it's likely that the files didn't burn correctly (which is why they aren't working).

I would suggest that you reburn the ISOs in a more traditional manner (by choosing the "burn image" command of a normal burning program), and then boot from the CD. If you still want to do a network install, there are some instructions in this TriLUG mailing list post. I'm sure a search of Google would produce more useful hits, if that doesn't help you.

Good luck.

I guess I might be getting a little confused with the .iso files and how they work then because i have WinRAR which lets me open them up; show me many files instead of just one. I made an .iso through Nero with the files that WinRAR had unpacked from the orignal CD and that CD did not work either. See Windows 98 reads the orignal CD saying it only has one file one it, that being an ISO file, but it will not read from it. If I use my 'unpacked' verison of that same CD 98 will run the autorun, but when I click okay to restart, it will not.

No, you cannot burn an *.iso file as a data file. You must open Nero, go to File=>burn image (if using Nero 5.5.x) or Recorder=>burn image (if using Nero 6.x). This will give you a dialog asking you for the image file. Select the ISO you've downloaded-- by the way, I don't mean any extracted folders or files from the *.iso, I mean the full *.iso itself. Doing so will then take you directly to the burn dialog. Burn the CD, and the original CD will be reconstituted automatically, and it will also be rendered bootable.

If you then reboot with the CD in the drive (and set your BIOS to boot from CD if necessary), you will be brought directly to the Mandrake installation.

Oh, and don't forget to check the MD5 sum of the *.iso file-- it would be a shame to have burned the CDs so many times and then have it fail because the original ISO was corrupted.

What is the MD5 of the *.iso file?

Hi!
Just came along to see if someone had answered your query - the MD5 checksum lets you certify whether a downloaded ISO is healthy and has not been corrupted.
The MD5 sumchecker can be downloaded from here http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/verifyiso.html
There is also a helpfile which explains how to check your ISOs. However, I'm currently unable to find the checksums for the Mandrake 9.2 CDs. Sorry.

Not sure if that worked. I think I am going to assume that the CDs are bad and try to redownload it. Thank you very much for all your help. Once again, it has been another learing exprience. Thanks again.

The checksums are normally right next to the ISOs (but named the same, except for the extension, so if you're using a web browser to surf an ftp site, sometimes the name is cut off, and you won't see that it's the md5 until you point your mouse cursor at it). On the site LittleAngel linked to (LinuxISO.org), if you go to the Mandrake page at http://www.linuxiso.org/distro.php?distro=29, there is a link to the MD5 sums there (right click and save). I can't find the ISOs for Mandrake 9.2 on the Mandrake mirrors, so skip that, but normally, had you gotten your ISOs from a Mandrake mirror, you would see the MD5 files in the same folder as the ISOs and could download them for checking.

Since you're still using Windows, you can install an MD5 checker for Windows, I like Brad Smith's Easy MD5 Creator, but there are others, (including the two offered by the LinuxISO page expaining how to use said programs); search Google. And of course, under Linux the md5 sumchecker is usually part of the base install of any distro.

Hope that explains it.

You probably burned them right if your trying to boot from the cdrom you have to make sure your bios is setup to boot first, or make a boot floppy (recommended) sorry I didn't read your whole post either but I've seen this problem so many times on this forum if you have a floppy drive use it to boot into setup.

So this whole time I had been downloading the new files and when the frist one finished (finally!) I went into Nero to start the burn and it gave this error message: "The entered block size does not correspond to the image length. The block size may be wrong. Do you want to correct the vaule or ignore." Me and errors, I will never get it I guess. Then I just went ahead and burned it away becuase I had no clue what to do there. Using the floppy to boot and it work; it loaded from the CD, farthest that I have ever gotten and then another error message. "error in exec of stage1 :-( trying to execute '/usr/bin/runinstall/' from the installation volume, FATAL ERROR IN STAGE1: Exe format error. I can't recover from this. You may reboot your system. I do love linux's errors. They are kind of funny actually. I am still trying to figure out this MD5 checker. I am playing around with and hopefully will get it soon. Nevermind I got it. So if those numbers and letters are not the same I have to redownload the freain' file again?? For the love of everything holy. They are not the fraekin' same. CD 1 for 9.1 came in wrong, CD 2 came in right , and I am still waiting on CD 3, cross your fingers for me. Thank you for all of your help. I am really grateful. Now I think that I know what I am doing finally and I am getting somewhere over than cursing out and kicking my computer. Thank you so much!!!!

Are you using IE to browse the FTP site and download the files? This might be worth installing Mozilla or Firefox for (or even Opera)-- IE is rather notorious for corrupting FTP downloads.

Glad you're getting the hang of the whole thing, though.

I actually use Opera when I do the download becuase my computer needs therpy and needs to restart about everyday or so and the downloads take about three days.

So ai have downloaded this .iso for the first image twice now and both times the sums do not match up and both times the files are the same. I am using Opera to download them. COuld it maybe be a problem with the mirror or is it something that I am doing? I am really at a loss.

If the isos get corrupted all the time, either try with another browser or an ftp client as WS_FTP and download again. You are even able to resume downloads with WS_FTP if something goes wrong....

You could always buy some very, very cheap CD's too, there're plenty of sites around that sells it. Search google after WS_FTP and Linux Isos, that would not take long