"searching for available packages" lockup
 

More Mandrake 9.2 installation freezes.... 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??????

just us a different cd for installation should work...

See your other post on this.

Linux mounts and unmounts the filesystem on a disk. If its not reading the files correctly it keeps trying for a bit then it SHOULD stop on its own. If you want to eject the disk you must let it finish first. Even then since its the install you might not be able to kick it out.
You can't just eject this disk and slap in the next. It needs to finish with this one first.


Why can't you boot to the cdrom?

What hardware are you running?

Make sure you have any usb storage devices unattached. Like cameras and harddrives.

it's an old computer a P1 and in the bios there didn't appear to be any way to change the boot order, even though there was a setting "boot from cd rom = enabled." I'm not quite a total newbie but definitely not a skilled or advanced techie... booting from the floppy from the alternative cd rom image has been working fine. it's just that i freeze at the 'searching for available packages' point. my question back to you in my other post on this is can I burn my own CD instead of using the one I bought from Mandrake... maybe just put the desired "package" on there so it doesn't have to search. Also the problem may be the old slow cd rom drive on the computer in question.