I am trying to use a IBM 120GB hard drive with my mandrake 9.0 operating system, but mandrake does not boot with the disk installed. I can not install mandrake 9.0 on the disk either, it stops at the partition check. In Windows it works just fine. Can anyone help me, please?

I don't know what tools Mandrake comes with, but maybe your windows partition makes up the entire 120gb. You should run partition magic or something similar to create a partition for root and swap.

Try each step seperately.
1) Try setting the hard drive in the BIOS to LBA

2) Change the drive to cable select

3) Change the drive to 15 heads instead of 16 heads (default)

4) Run IBM Disk Utility and do a low-level format


For mandrake, did you check the disk images by a md5summer utility before writing them to the CD. Also how fast did you write to the CD. Going at a high write speed does include noise on the pits making it hard for CD readers read the disc. Did you wait about 5 minutes after you have writen to the CD. If not, CD can be ruin from too much heat.

Thanks for your replies i will try to change the settings on my disk now, my CD`s work just fine, i have tried them on an other hard disk and there the installation work just fine.
All right lets try again!!