I don't know if this is the right place to ask this question, but I'm having problems installing redhat on my laptop. (hp pavilion ze5170)

When I boot from the cd the redhat menu comes up. I hit enter to begin the installation. when it gets to the testing cd thing, it hangs and does nothing, I'm force to do a hard shutdown. I then try it again by not using the interactive set-up but by using the text-mode and it didn't work either. Finally I did I again, but this time I typed "linux noprobe" so that it didn't test the hardware, but for some reason it did it again!!!!!e

Can anyone please tell me what to do??? any help will be greatly appreciated..

thanks

It sounds like the CD may be damaged or if it was copies it may have been written at too high a speed for your CD drive.

Have you tried running a media check on the disks?

Thanks david, but I'm completely sure that the cd works, because I have windows xp on it and it read the cd. the part where it hangs is at very beginning when it says "CD FOUND PRESS OK TO TEST CD OR PRESS SKIP TO SKIP TEST" I can't press anything by then because it is hang and it would not respond to anything.

csosa...
I'm looking for some information for you. In the mean time...boot with the disk in the drive...once the install screen comes up...hit enter...when the test media screen comes up...choose to skip the testing...make sure that you give it plenty of time... I'll get back when I find more information...

Looks like the kernel ships with red hat has a problem reading from your cd drive. You could try booting from a boot disk with a different kernel version or try a different distro.

linux idebus=66

You have to tap your space bar continuously as the system starts during initial install before it gets to the check media or skip window. Wierd but it works ...