Hi,

I have a second machine that I have set up as a webserver, currently on XP Pro SP1. I decided to try mandrake on it to see if it would fix some problems. I downloaded and burned mandrake 10 official, burned at 16x to try and reduce the chance of errors. Created an ext2 partition and a swap partition in windows using partitionmagic and then rebooted and stuck the CD in.

The CD was recognised fine. It booted up and I select enter to install. It took forever on the 'loading program into memory' section but eventually passed it and came up with an error:

Could not uncompress second stage ramdisk. This is probably due to a hardware error while reading the data. (This could be caused by a hardware failure or a linux kernel bug)

I selected OK and carried on. Did the language, license and security stuff and got to the partition stage of the setup. I selected to use an existing partition and then selected the one I had created earlier.

Then, the installer comes up with this error:

Internal error: No kernel available (and then a load of info)

It stops there and I can't go any further.

The machine is a celeron 766 with 256MB RAM, 2x 8GB hard drives, a Geforce2 MX400 and some random 52x CD drive.

I have not got a clue what's wrong, because I'm a complete newb to linux, so does anyone know what I can do? Is it a dodgy burn? Any help would be great, thanks.

Update: I have checked the md5 sum and it seems to be correct. The edit post button didn't want to work - probably because of my over zealous ad filter.

Not to discourage any of you from Linux, but I too have encountered almost the exact same problems when installing 10 official onto a 600 Mhz, 5 GB, 56 MB ram laptop, which by the way is a Compaq Presario 1200XL. It would be much appreciated if someone could help us. I currently run 9.2 with no problems whatsoever. Thanks!

(bump)

I found this post while searching on the subject, and it is the very same issue that I am having with Mandrake 10. Does anyone have an answer to this? Should I just try 9.2? I have the mandrake 9.2 live CD and it runs great.

Anyone?

I had the same error. I tried installing Mandrake 9.2 and got the same thing. I'm thinking it may be a compatibility issue with my motherboard. It's an Aus A7N8X-X with an Athlon XP 2500+.

Also after trying to install Mandrake I could no longer run my windows XP. It was coming up that it couldn't load explorer.exe. I tried re-installing windows XP and now it won't even boot up. It now has a 0mb partition at the start of the drive that I can't get rid of.

Any ideas on what caused the problem in the first place and how I can get windows back so I can try again?

Just some thoughts on the original error:

Could not uncompress second stage ramdisk. This is probably due to a hardware error while reading the data. (This could be caused by a hardware failure or a linux kernel bug)

I've read a few threads around the place that this could be due to a dodgy burn or download. Before Windows screwed the pooch, I did check each cd after I burnt the iso's and they seemed ok. But I didn't run any checking program.

Just a little thing about my error message.

Error
KERNEL ERROR: Could not find kernel

or something like that. Will post real error soon.

Thanks for your input guys... By process of elimination, I have decided that it was either a bad download, or a bad burn. I re-downloaded the iso files, checked the md5 sums (which, admitedly I did not do the first time, didn't know how), and burned them onto different brand cd's at a slow 12x, just to be sure. The entire installation was perfect and error free, done in around 20 minutes.

So my suggestion to any other people out there with this problem would be to a) double check those downloads, and b) do a good slow burn. I can't say it will fix it for everyone, but it worked for me.

Mandrake 10 is working out GREAT for me, btw...

For what it's worth....

I found this thread searching for this error message ->

Could not uncompress second stage ramdisk.

I had verified the md5sums before burning the CD's, and my
equipment is very reliable, so I didn't suspect a bad burn.
But after reading, this seemed to be the only possible problem.
NB: When I burned the image I used a 650MB CD, so I had to use
the -overburn switch with cdrecord. That was the problem. I've
burned new CD's that are 700MB and just loaded CD1 and got
past that error. I'm confident they'll install now.

Hope so, because someone brought me a Compaq Presario 730AP
that she said "is dead." Long story short, it's just major Windoze XP
problems. So I've done a low-level format on the drive and now
will install Linux. I'm not giving her Slackware because she's comp
illiterate, and I don't want to tech her all the time. From reading the
forums, if Mandrake will install and detect all your hardware, then it's
pretty much idiot-proof after that. It comes with OOo I believe, so
she'll be able to use her M$ Office documents.

Hope this helps someone else with the same error. Check your CD's.