I have a copy of Mandrake 9.0 and wouldn't mind cracking it out and having a look. I have attempt to install it before, both in text mode & graphical mode but once I've reach the installion step where Mandrake starts copying files to the drive, it allways stop responding about 12%. I cannot remember the acutal file is freezes on but I do remember attempt a to skip the file but it's vital to GROME. The cd is from a maginize PC World and in very good condion, so I'm curiously why the installion failed. I've checked my hard drive and it's in good order and I have no trouble with any other OS. I also belive the person who gave me the CD had completed the installion.

I'm running a Intel Pentium III Processor
801 Mhz, 160 Mb of RAM (I think it was only 120 Mb when I last attempted the installion.)
10gig hard drive (don't laugh)

Anyway is this just faulty media or just my computer been difficult. I was thinking the upgrade of RAM may help overcome this but are not to keen on deleting a working OS to find out Mandrake wont take on the installion. Also I only have dailup (broadband not yet in my area) and so I simple just cant download another copy so I would really like to make this work.

well Ive had the problem with one of my distros...you could overcome it if you just use KDE instead of GNOME...i.e in the software package selection check KDE and do not ckeck the GNOME ....... this could work

Its just my suspicions
but .....
I've tried some Linux distros from computer magazines, that are mainly windows orientated, and strangely some of them seem to be very buggy
distros like Mandrake 8 & 9 and Red Hat 8 & 9
this may or may not be the case in your situation
but I would recommend that you get Linux distros off linux magazines like
"Linux Format", "Linux User" or "Linux magazine"
to name just three

alternatively as has already been suggested
choose not to install Gnome
but use KDE instead

hope this helps
floppy

Shall try, I think we get one of thoes magzines in Australia. So I just go and get another disk set so I'm not destorying a OS for no reason.

you could also download them from the iso section of this site if you have broadband........

If your CDs are images of the official download ISOs, you could check the CDs against the published MD5 checksums. In Windows I've used MD5summer in the past to do this.

f7a093af34b8cbe1abc165213fea9deb Mandrake90-cd1-inst.i586.iso
05a3ccafaacc37d6d1e2f260fc274549 Mandrake90-cd2-ext.i586.iso
1a2fd731fb6e30d39b0b99f504b231b3 Mandrake90-cd3-i18n.i586.iso

I suspect the packaging in older Mandrake distros was not very thorough. The 9.1 installer for instance complains of several missing files even though the MD5 checksums of my CDs match the published ones. I didn't encounter any problems actually using 9.1 so it seems the missing files were not critical.

Mandrake 9.0 is from September 2002. After that we had 9.1, 9.2, 10.0, 10.1, and the current release Mandriva LE2005 (aka 10.2). If you have a burner and broadband, or don't mind a few overnight downloads on dialup using a file manager with ftp resume capability, you can download LE2005 from:
ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/pub2/Man.../iso/10.2/i586

The files you want are Mandriva-Linux-2005-Limited-Edition-Download-CD1.i586.iso, Download-CD2.i586.iso, and Download-CD3.i586.iso