I have been trying to install Mandrake for the last month or so. I have tried 9.2 but then thought that version might be too powerfull for the machine I'm installing it to. So I downloaded 8.2. When I install it (all the tries) have multiple installation errors. What is causing that, is there any way to fix it?? Would the ISO from a different source cause no installation errors? Any ideas?

Check your installation media (should be an option in the install). If the media checks out, then it's a problem or conflict with the hardware.
Post the exact errors.

Also, if you have a spare CDrom drive kicking around, swap it with the one you're using. I coudln't for the life of me get any distro installed on a circa-1994 machine I had kicking around. turned out it was because its cdrom drive was too old to play well with CD-Rs.

--Rounan

Check the md5sums first - save yourself from creating coasters Read about it here: http://linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/verifyiso.html

I don't see why 9.2 would be too powerful for your system. As long as your system is i586 (at least a Pentium 200), you should have no problems installing. Mandrake 8.2 is compiled for i586 as well btw, so I don't see the advantage of going back to it. For a slower system you can always just install a more lightweight WM, or even install without X altogether. I don't see the sense in using older software, just because you have a slower machine. In some cases, newer software runs better on older hardware (i.e KDE 3.2 versus older 3.x branches).

i dont know all of the specs off the top of my head, but the machine is a micron trek2 laptop. 6 gig hd, im pretty sure its a i586 as well. but whenever i tried installing 9.2 it would freeze during the installation... so i dont know.

i couldnt find that option of how to check the installation media... or i dont know where to look.

i still cant get it to install, and i even tried 9.2 again. it just keeps freezing during the install, so i dont know why its doing that. i havent gotten 8.2 to install yet either, something keeps going wrong for one reason or another so i have to start over...

any hints on what to do next?

as XavierP suggested above, check the md5sums (see his post for a link if you don't know how to do it). Also, it often helps to burn the CDs at low speed (4x or less) to minimize the possibility of burn errors.

confusion: do i have to run it on the actual linux machine, or can i run it on this machine that i have the iso downloaded to? those instructions are confusioning me.

dude!! check the link that XavierP gave you. yes, you can do it in windows.

i did check the link, downloaded it. im trying to run it but i dont know what to do... its making my computer freak out as well... so this is just lovely.

what do you mean by freak out? It can take a long time and you'll see a lot of hard drive activity.

i didnt know what to do with it, and i clicked the wrong thing, it froze and i couldnt ctrl+alt+del it to close the program, and it wouldnt close. but i got my computer rebooted and its checking them now. its done 2 out of the 3 cd's and so far no errors....