Hi guys, first post here.
I'm pretty much a beginner when it comes to linux. I've had dual-boot systems with RH 6.1, 7.2, 7.3 and Mandrake 7.something. So I've played around with it for awhile, but I'm not an expert by any means.

I most recently had WinXP and RH 7.3 dual-booting and working just fine. I decided it was time to do a clean install on the box. So I planned on a triple-boot with 98 (some of my kid's games don't like XP), XP Pro, and Linux. So far, I've got 98 and XP installed and working fine with 10 gigs free space left for Mandrake.

But I can't get the install to work.

I dl'ed the iso's, checksum was good. Burned to cd with Nero at 24x.
Every time I try to boot off the cd and install, I keep getting hangs.
First couple of tries, it would hang right after asking me which mouse I have. The mouse works fine before selecting a mouse. I have a USB Intellimouse Optical, but I tried choosing MS Explorer, Wheel mouse, generic 2-button. Each time, the install would hang. I even tried choosing None and it still hung. Actually, now that I think about it, it seems like there was one time when the mouse pointer froze while just moving it. I hadn't even clicked anything yet.

I also had it hang after selecting English as the language.

And once, it made it past the mouse selection (although I lost the mouse pointer after choosing the mouse and it took about 3 minutes before it went on to the partitioning section). So I used the arrow keys and selected the partition space to use. As soon as I said OK, it hung again. Or at least did nothing for 10 minutes before I killed it.

I'm running:
Abit KR7A-Raid
XP 1700+
512 MB Crucial PC2100
Cendyne Lightning CDR (Lite-On)
WD 800JB
MS Intellimouse Optical
Gainward GF3 Ti200

Any ideas on things to try would be great.
Thanks

I can't really help you, 'cause I purchased a copy, and it worked fine. So, if there was something wrong with the dl/burning process, I wouldn't know. The mouse thing, though... I installed it on three different machines, with about five different mice, and it's the same thing every time. As soon as I select a mouse from the setup, it stops working. How it was working to that point, I have no idea. It works once you finish the whole install and reboot.

Also, the installation is dead slow. Even on my new laptop, but esp. on my old desktop. It would seem to hang, but it was actually taking as much as ten minutes per step. Your machine is quite a bit faster than the one I'm talking about, but maybe it's a similar problem.

milos

So after the mouse stopped responding, you were able to complete the installation without it?
That is weird. Makes you wonder why it worked before you pick a mouse.
I was in a hurry, so maybe I didn't wait as long as I should have for each step to finish. Seems kinda crazy that it would just sit and do nothing for a couple of minutes after simply selecting the language or which mouse you have. Never had that issue with the RH installs or the Mandrake 7.

I had the same problem
what worked for me was
1. remove all non-essential usb devices (printers,joysticks,anything)
2. if that does not work use a ps/2 mouse (you may try to unplug the usb mouse and select none)

I really recommend using the ps/2 mouse at least throughthe intall procedure because I could get the usb mouse not to hang the system, but the mouse itself would not load and i would have use the keyboard for the rest of the install.

hope this helps

Thanks guys.
Just to update:
I decided to give Gentoo a try instead of Mandrake.
Took me a couple of days to get everything installed. But once it was installed, I could not get the networking to work. I tried everything I could think of and everything that other's suggested. So finally I gave up in frustration and decided that as cool and geeky as it might be to build from scratch, I really didn't have the free time put into trying to get it to work.

So I decided to give Mandrake one more try without changing anything and for some reason, it went fine through 95% of the install.
This time, everything worked perfectly until I clicked on the "configure" button for the bootloader in the final part of the install where it gives you the option to configure everything. At that point, it hung up for a couple of minutes and the mouse pointer froze. But I was still able to finish up the installation, although each of the last couple of steps seemed to take a really long time.

So I'm still puzzled as to why it would not work several times in a row, then just decide to work for some reason.

But all is well now and Mandrake 9.2 is running great alongside win98 and win XP.

Thanks. This is a great forum and I'm sure I'll be back with more questions.