Unable to boot from the CD-ROM, I made a boot floppy which works fine till it gets to the IDE detection during the second stage install. Then the computer makes a noise that sounds like the HD grinding, then the whole install just hangs there. Does this whether it's text install, graphic install, or expert install.

Mandrake support said: "According to you hardware profile, you need to boot with cd2 in first (alternative kernel).
So if it doesn't work:
reboot and when you see lilo ( you have choice, between linux, failsafe, type Escape and write) linux ide=nodma"

What does that mean???? I can't boot from the CD-ROm drive with CD1 let alone CD2. I don't see how to make a boot floppy from CD2, which doesn't even appear to have the boot image files on it. So then I tried what he said, typing in "linux ide=nodma" at the "boot:" prompt, and that did nothing. I'm getting really frustrated and almost ready to give up!!

This is my first experience with linux but I consider myself a medium to above average computer user, but I am completed befuddled about this process. I did diagnostics on the HD (a Western Digital) and everything is fine, and obviously it works fine in Windows. I also tried the Mandrake 9.2 install on another computer and it made it past the IDE detection stage and on to the partition phase.

Can anyone help me with this? I'm still waiting for another answer from Mandrake support, but would welcome any ideas!!!
-- Margaret

Sorry, not a Mandrake user but I am running into a similar problem with Slackware 9.1. I have been out of the linux loop for a while, so much has changed. I have a western digital 40G hardrive which requires additional software to recognize the drive's capacity. bare.i makes it to the boot: prompt but fails shortly thereafter, i.e. "loading vmlinuz ..........,
boot failed: change disk and ..."
I dropped back to the boot disks for the 7.1 distribution and was able to boot to the root prompt but fdisk could only recognize the primary partition and a very large second partition. I need to work on this a bit but if this sort of situation seems similar to what you are dealing with let me know and I'll offer progress reports.

Ok, I figured out how to use the alternative boot image file and that got me past the lockup at IDE detection. I decided to erase the windows partition and got past that stage; now, however, I am stuck with a frozen screen at "searching for available packages."

The CD rom just stops after awhile and won't even let me use the eject button to try CD 2 !!!!! What should I do??????

How long are you waiting for the system to continue?

It sounds like you might have a touchy burn. How fast did you burn the cdrom? The slower the better.

The CDs were purchased from Mandrake.com.... I wait for maybe ten minutes then start over again. I should mention this is an older computer, a Pentium I, with only a 8x CD-rom drive. What folder are the "packages" in, should I maybe burn a new CD with only the package I want on it?

My standard reply for this would be....

How much memory do you have? Mandrake requires at least 64 meg just to run correctly.

Do you have plug and play turned off in the bios?

You should have the option in the bios of booting to the cdrom so you don't need the floppy disks images. Though your system my be to old for that option. In that case you'll need the boot floppy image.

In any case you should be able to use the normal Mandrake linux kernel since its all compiled for i586 and that covers the pentium class also.


Make sure you have all USB peripherals unplugged for the install. If you have any.

Remember that the pentium I was make to run something on the level of win 95 and win 98. The latest linux ditro's are on the level of XP in my opinion.

This all could fall down to a buggy cdrom drive. 8X is a bit old.