Severe problems with Fedora Core 1 and Fedora Core 2 installatiom
 

I have been having no end of problems with the installers on Fedora Core 1 and Fedora Core 2.

I have two DVDs containing both distributions, made available by Linux Format Magazine (www.linuxformat.co.uk). Both discs are sound and have no apparent physical damage.

I wanted to perform a clean installation of FC2 onto my laptop, so I popped the disc in, loaded the DVD, configured my system and began the installation. Only to have it lock up solid.

So I tried it three additional times, and each time it locked up at a different part of the install process.

I switched over to my FC1 DVD and tried that, and the system still locked up.

I tried the geometry hack that can be used to prevent broken partition tables with FC2's installer, but that didn't work at all. At the moment, I'm stuck with several empty Linux partitions and a (fortunately for me) working Windows XP install. Checking the partition table with various tools such as PartitionMagic and sfdisk show no major irregularities, so the issues must lie with the kernels used by both installers, or with my laptop's hardware.

Does anyone have ANY ideas that I could try? I really want to get Linux back onto my machine...

Here's some additional information.

During one of the failed installs, I switched to the F2 console and ran top to watch the process activity, thinking that perhaps it was simply an installer hang. I was rewarded with watching a set of pdflush and kjournald invocations go into the D state, which had the side effect of pushing anaconda into the D state and stopping the install cold.

I read a bug on the RedHat Bugzilla that stated that some people had been having issues with certain harddisks (https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla...buglist=119547) that I believe may be related.

Does anyone at all have any ideas that I could try?

Well, on the advice of one of the members of Linux Gazette's Answer Gang, I tried memtest86 and discovered that one of my SODIMMS causes it to hang when performing a standard test.

I'll write back if I can now install FC2 successfully.

EDIT: No, the installer still hangs.