If I've selected the incorrect forum for this question I apologize in advance.

I have a Gateway GP6-466C with an Intel (Freeman) ZX motherboard with a Celeron 466 processor. The machine has known good CD-ROM, floppy and hard drives and seems to be functioning properly.

The issue is that I can't install Slackware 11.0 using a CD-ROM. It's a known good CD and image- I've used it on many other machines. Everything in the BIOS, as far as I can tell, is set correctly. What I get is a message telling me it's an invalid system disk. I can put the same Slackware CD in another machine and it boots from the CD just fine. I can put a Win 2000 CD in the GP6-466C and it will boot just fine.

Going the floppy route doesn't get me much further. I get:

Loading..................................................
Uncompressing Linux...

invalid compressed format (err=2)

-- System halted

Of course, I can use a Win 98 startup disk and boot the machine.

I've tried another known good CD-ROM drive and cable with the same results.

I don't consider myself a Linux expert by any means but over the last 2 1/2 years I've installed Slackware 10.2 and 11.0 on quite a number of machines, including Gateways of similar vintage, without incident.

Has anyone run into problems of this sort and, if so, do you have any pearls of wisdom to share? I'll be happy to provide more info if needed and thanks in advance for any help.

try your Slackware-10.2 disk and see if it will allow you to install...

Of course I wasn't smart enough to keep my 10.2 CDs but I can always burn another disk 1... I'll advise whether or not it works.

OK, a 10.2 CD will boot and presumably install. So I burned another 11.0 CD at 2x (the first one was burned at 10x) and it won't boot. The 10x and 2x CDs were from different mirrors. Any ideas?
Update: Just burned an 11.0 CD at 4x from yet another mirror- same deal, no boot.

i suggest installing Slackware10.2 since it will boot...

also you could try disabling ACPI in the BIOS and see if the Slackware-11 CD will boot...

Disabled ACPI in BIOS- no difference. I don't really want to install 10.2 as I'd really like KDE 3.5. I currently have Vector 5.8 on it but really want to go the 11.0 route if I can ever figure out how to make it work. Thanks for the help.

Hi!
Almost the same happened to me. I don't have the solution.
I suppose this is the old machine problem.
I was advised (in other forum)to re-burn the old ISO (tested with 10.0) with needed packages, and then update.
Hope this can help

Very strange. I think Okie is right though. You can install a basic 10.2 system then upgrade everything to 11. There are instructions for doing this in a text file on the first disc of 11. Good luck!

I've run into a similar problems while playing around with an older Gateway GP6-400. running with an Intel 500 Mhz 486 processor,

The machine originally ran Windows xp just fine (slowly, but everything worked.) I wanted to install a small ,lightweight version of Linux such as DSL or Vector Linux 5.8 Gold.

I used cfdisk to set up the new partitions. cfdisk reported:
"The operating system thinks the geomoetry on /dev/hda is 19765,16,63. cfdisk suspects that the correct goemoetry should be 1240,255,63"

I went to the BIOS setup screen and tried to find where I could correct the setting for the disk geometry but found nothing helpful.

I've tried installing Vector 5.1 and 5.8 as well as Damn Small Linux N, and Suse 10.3 and ran into another strange problem. The install disk booted up fine but when it looked for the disk again to start the installation process, each distro said it couldn't find the install media.

If anyone has found a way to get around these obstacles, I'd appreciate hearing from you.

All sucess
Keithk2

Make sure when you burn your copies, you use only quality CD's. Not all CD drives are created equal. And neither are the blanks.