Where can I find generic vmlinuz and initrd.img files?
 

I used to run Mint 9 Isadora. One morning I found it with a frozen black screen, so I rebooted. This failed several times, and after a process of investigation, I think the mbr was corrupted. I tired to load my LiveCD, but it and every other one I have has somehow been corrupted to the point that 1) it will not boot at all, or 2) I couldn't access the installer. I'm currently running my Incognito cd. I came to the conclusion that my only option was to wipe the drive, partitions and all, and start fresh.
The one time I was able to boot the Mint cd, I couldn't complete the installation, whether or not I setup partitions, or used the whole drive. Every time I boot my Puppy Linux cd, I get malloc errors. The Incognito cd doesn't load into RAM, so I can't burn a cd. I've heard of a method to install an OS straight from an ISO. (I can't put it on a USB stick, because my BIOS doesn't support booting from a flash drive.)
So what are my options? This process assumes that you have an existing OS on your drive. Even if I hadn't wiped my drive, I don't know if I would have been able to trust the files' integrity. Even if my Incognito cd has these files, I don't know if they would work or not.
This is the page I got the idea from:
http://www.linuxforu.com/2009/03/ins...t-from-an-iso/

Hi, I'm not familiar with all the distros you use, but...

Lately I have had difficulties booting from cd-rom.

I posted a fix/hack here...
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-linux-928764/

The only thing I have not done is to swap out my dvd-rw for another, to test.

I hope it helps you.

If I got it right: Your installed Mint didn't work anymore, and all Live CDs/DVDs you have won't also, or only run with errors.
I would think that this is a hardware failure, I would at least recommend to do some basic tests for the RAM (with Memtest86+) and the harddisk (with the manufacturer's diagnosis tool).
Based on my experiences your description sounds like a faulty RAM module.

On the question of booting from a USB stick, you may find it does work. My BIOS dates from 2004. If you configure it, only HD, CD, and floppy (!) are listed as options. But if you plug in a bootable USB stick, start the computer, and call the BIOS boot menu, the USB stick is listed as available and it works. (It's only taken me 7 years to discover this...)

@ McCann: Correct. I guess that's the meaning of 'legacy'.

I've tried formatting the stick to FAT32 and Ext3 (which were suggestions from two different parties), but I get a blinking cursor. Unetbootin hasn't helped either, whether I've installed to USB to to the HD. Sometimes I get a 'Boot Error' message, with the blinking cursor on the next line. I've used both the GParted and the Linux Disk Utility, but nothing seems to work. BTW, the Disk Utility says the drive is clean, Smart Status says the disk is healthy.
Also, it may be significant that no matter how many times I've downloaded the ISO, the md5sum never seems to match. I don't know if that applies to the Unetbootin option of dl/install.
I found a page that says you can put memtest on a flashdrive and reboot, and it'll automatically run. We'll see.

With the new live CD version of Salix, you can create a bootable usb stick on a Windows computer without using any extra software such as unetbootin. You just extract the files from the iso on to an NTFS stick with unzip, and then run the provided Windows program install-on-USB.cmd.

@ mccann: I don't have windoze. Next option?

I agree with TobiSGD that you have some sort of hardware problem.

In response to the suggestion that a faulty RAM module may be responsible for my problems...
The CDLinux (Compact Distro Linux) has Memtest86+ on its LiveCD. I have run it 2/3 times, and each time reports no errors.
I have also scanned the drive the last time I was able to boot my Mint LiveCD, using whatever its disk checking utility is called. No errors there either.
I am able to run installation of an OS, I just can't boot the drive. I can use the drive to store data as if it were an external drive. The directory structure can be seen just as if I had been able to boot, and behaves as such (restrictions on root, etc.). At this point I can boot & run LiveCD versions of SLITaz and CDLinux.
I have successfully installed SLITaz, and the process reported no errors - but I still can't boot. I can post the contents of the menu.lst if that will help.

# /boot/grub/menu.lst: GRUB boot loader configuration.
#

# By default, boot the first entry.
default 0

# Boot automatically after 8 secs.
timeout 8

# Graphical splash image.
splashimage=/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz

# Change the colors.
#color yellow/brown light-green/black

# For booting SliTaz from : /dev/sda1
#
title SliTaz GNU/Linux (cooking) (Kernel vmlinuz-2.6.37-slitaz)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.37-slitaz root=/dev/sda1 lang=en_US