I'm just about to try Debian...

I really don't think it's a hardware problem for me, my second CD worked fine. Was it only your first CD as well?

Never bothered to try the second CD.

How would it not be hardware?

From the beginning.

1. I brought the computer home. It wouldn't load Slack off of known good CDs. Ok. Loaded SuSE (from CD), partitioned, put the Slackware CD on a dedicated partition.

2. Booted up, used the CD, loaded from the partition. Installed fine.

3. Piddled around, loaded SuSE 9.2 (via ftp) when it came out.

4. Went back reinstalled Slack from the same partition again with no problems.

5. Got Slackware 10.1, put the CDs on the partition and used new CDs since I thought maybe it was a CD issue even though it worked on my laptop for installing.
Booted up using the CD like I've done, went through setting up partitions, got to the installation process and it puked installing from the HD.

6. Ok, wierd, so I copied the files from Slack 10 (previously on the partition) back to the partition. I used these very CDs and files to install Slack 10 from the HD before.
Rebooted. Same thing, error messages all over the place installing from the Hard Drive.

So I've successfully installed from the Hard drive but never from CD. Now the installation from the hard drive is failing just like the CDs even when I use the same files I previously used to install on this machine so I know the files are not corrupt as the installer states.

I then tried Ubuntu this AM just to see. No go, it won't load any packages from the CD. Had an error reading them. Gee, that sounds familiar. :(

So if it's not hardware then what is it? I've tried two different types of CD, and previously been successful. Plus I've installed Slackare 10 and 10.1 using the same CDs that fail on the desktop on my laptop.

I'm stuck with a desktop that I can't even use since there's no OS on it!

I know the media is good, I'm at a complete loss here folks.

I went to the local computer store and talked with one of the guys there.

Several of them there run linux so he tried to be as helpful as he could.

He felt it was something related to the 2.4 series kernel on the MOBO level. That the 2.4 kernel wasn't supporting and was corrupting something perhaps as evidenced by the fact that I could install SuSE 9.2 on here. Or I just had some bad hardware. I don't want to spend the money to figure out what's wrong with it.

I give up.

Keeping Slack on my laptop but it's not worth it trying to install on my desktop.

i am having the same issue on 3 different machines.

A brand new laptop
and 2 different desktops.

I know my media is good - i have tried got it from 2 different sources and it has been burn muliple times. I can copy the files off the disks to a hard drive etc. I have been playing around with different distros so one of the desktops has had redhat and ubuntu installed eon it with out an issue. It is something to do with a specific piece of hardware ie an IDE controller or the packaging of the CDs.

I should give up on it i guess.

Exactly where I ended up too. :(

Using Kanotix now. Based on Debian Sid, what a change in philosophy from Slack. :D

But at least I can use my computer...

just out of interest what mirror did you download from ?

okay i have the answer, check the MD5sums of your ISO. If you downloaded from Pacnet in AU (http://mirror.pacific.net.au/slackwa...ware-10.1-iso/) then the MD5sum don't match - their ISO is corrupt.

I just downloaded a fresh ISO from Planet-Mirror and can install fine

It turns out that my the other copy i had was downloaded by a workmate from the same mirror.

we are all Lazy .... very lazy.

MD5 sums checked out.

This was an issue for me for 9.1, 10.0, AND 10.1. All of the CDs I burned installed fine on my laptop but not my desktop. I don't think it's a corrupted .iso file since I'm sitting here using it right now to type this message from my laptop and it occured on 4 difference CDs and 3 versions from different mirrors where the MD5 sums checked out.

it is working fine for me now.

After getting a good iso i can install on all the machines that where failing yesterday.