i don't know if any of you can help me, but i'm desperate. ( :

Ok, i've been having this problem for about a week and can't figure it out for the life of me. I've downloaded the iso for mandrake 9.0 and when I go to install it, it will go to where it loads it into memory, it will then give me an error stating that it can't uncompress the 2nd stage ramdisk. I've tried redownloading and burning the iso, different cd rom, 2 different hard drives, everything. It tells me it could be a linux kernel error or a hw error. I have 8.2 and it installs like a champ. If it matters, my specs are:
MB: ASUS A7V266E
Memory: 512 ddr
hard drive: (a) 40 mb seagate, it think
(b) 60 mb ibm
processor: amd athlon 1700xp
cd rom: (a) lite on 52x
(b) sony burner
ethernet card, geforce 4 mx440 graphics card
etc.
once again, all of this works with 8.2 but won't even begin to install with 9.0. Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated, Thanks in advance.

try this parameter:

linux noathlon

I heard of people having problems with the media they are using. I had the same roblem you have. If your burner uses zone burning try lowering the speed to a point where it bruns at cav. Also try using doa (raw) to burn instead of tao (track at once).