I am familiar with open source on Windows and decided to join the Linux community. I am having problems with installing a variety of Linux distributions on my spare PC. It's a detailed story... forgive my incorrect usage of terms as I am a .

GOAL: Set up a LAMP (Linux Box, Apache Server, MySQL and PHP)

I started with a spare PII box with 256 Megs Ram running W2K.
- Lindspire 4.0 LiveCD seems to work fine.
- Downloaded and burned Fedora Core 3 on various CDs on main box.
- All of the md5sums were correct.
- Media tests checked on main box were okay.
- Media tests on spare sometime passed, sometimes failed.
- Bought/Installed new CD-ROM
- Media tests on spare sometime passed, sometimes failed.
- Installed anyway
- 1st install successful
- Computer keeps freezing after 10, 30 minutes of use.
- Computer freezes even if I don't log on.

- Downloaded Ubuntu 5.04 ISO
- All of the md5sums were correct.
- Computer keep freezing during installation

Bought a used computer at local store. Intel Centrino, 1.6 Ghz, 256 Meg Ram running W2K.
- Fedora Core 3 install failed/froze three times
- Ubuntu 5.04 install failed/froze twice
- Downloaded Mandriva 10.2/i586
- Install failed first time
- found linuxquestions.org, registered and posted this saga.

Questions:
1- WHAT AM I DOING WRONG? I was guessing hardware until I bought the second box.
2- I found Knoppix_V3.8.1. Will running Linux off of a LiveCD wear out my CD-ROM?
3- Any suggestions?

Hi there glemon!

Spooky story you got up there . Welcome to LinuxQuestions by the way. My guess is that something has gone wrong with the media you are using, since it fails the checking during the install on your spare machine. Usually, I've found that burning at lower speeds helps a lot and also found that CD-RW's are less common to failure and more reliable, since you don't waste media/money with bad images..

Maybe you could ask a friend to burn the CD for you just to be sure?. You can always order Linux CD's from the net for like 1 dollar. Ubuntu even ships freely their distribution in pressed media. I've got like a few copies, but took a really long time.

What program are you using to burn the media by the way?. I've found Nero and Alcohol nice...

And Knoppix will run totally from your CD-rom. Other distributions provide a similar thing too, as Slackware, Ubuntu and SuSE. However, I found those Live CD's only good for testing your hardware compatibility with Linux, as a rescue tool or to show Linux to your friends. Nothing beats an HD install indeed.

Good luck though!

Just my two cents, but I think it sounds like you have a bad CD-ROM! I had a freezing issue some time back that was fixed by popping in a different CD drive; that, and/or by reburning the media (though your multiple-distro story kinda negates a single bad burn).

Hope that helps at the very least!

I used ISORecorderV2B2.zip to burn the ISO images to the CD-ROM.

Are there better ISO burners?

When you suggest that I have a bad CD-ROM, are you refering to the burner?

- I have used two CD-ROM Drives, the one that came from the new computer and the new one that I bought. Using either caused the install to freeze.

I would still think it's the hardware. Do you use some kind of equipment on both machines?
Or you are really unlucky and have defective RAM on both computers. You could run a memory test (don't know if there is an option like this on one of your boot CD's).

Why not try installing Knoppix to your hdisk? The KDE menu has an entry to the script somewhere...

I want to thank everyone who has provided ideas.

I found the problem was a corrupted harddrive. I had two harddrives. A 4GB from the old computer and 30GB from the new one. As soon as I removed the 4GB-HD as the master, and from the computer completely, the install was successful.

Since the install finished at 2AM, I haven't done more testing.

Thanks for all of the help!