I am new to Linux, and wanted to install it on an old AMD K-6 233 MHz running on Windows 95 that my uncle gave me. I got a friend at work to burn me a copy of the retail version of Red Hat 7.2. It's two installation disks. Well, I set my BIOS to boot first from my CD-ROM drive, then the hard drive, then the floppy drive, but the install 1 disk I received didn't boot up. When I read the CD's in Windows, all of the files seem to be there, but it didn't boot or install. So I went to another machine and made a boot disk. I rebooted with the disk in the drive, and I was ecstatic when the installation start-up screens came up. I've tried selecting both GUI, text, and expert install options, always the same thing happens. It unpacks, then it comes to a screen where it asks for my language, and the language model of my keyboard. I enter those and then a message pops up that says "Cannot find a Red Hat CD in any CD-ROM device. Please insert a Red Hat CD and press ENTER" or something to that effect. Again, it's not my CD-ROM drive, because the CD shows up in Windows. I even copied the CD's to the hard drive, and tried to use that, but it STILL said that there were no files there. I have heard that if you don't copy the install CD's correctly, Windows extracts the files wrong and makes it so I can't use them to install Linux. Is that true? If so, is there any way around this, or am I screwed? Also, if I need to burn the CD's again, can someone please tell me the correct way of doing it so that it will boot, or just install correctly. I can make another copy on Monday and try installing it on Monday night. Any help would be appreciated.

You can copy the whole boot cds, create a boot disk for hd install, but remember to create partition for files and leave the rest of your hd free.
Or, if you're going to burn the cds again, make sure that they are downloaded correctly (using md5summer from www.md5summer.org; compare the results with those in MD5SUM file from the directory you have images from). Also make sure you're making the fist disk bootable.

maybe feeding the exact cdrom device during
install helps
assuming cdrom master second ide; enter
linux hdc=cdrom (hdd is slave etc)
or try the cdrom as a slave on first ide/slave on secondary
check/alter bios in standard cmos setup (award bios)
line for autodetect Ides(HDDs) cdrom; mode is mostly set to auto,
try for mode; normal or cdrom.

saw something like this at the redhat site, something with
gotcha and workarounds

oh and apart from checksum control, check your memory
too! use memtest86 get it at www.memtest86.com it can
cause strange errors and they mostly show up in installs

Welcome to Linux!

If my memories are correct, some releases of RedHat don't play nice with AMD CPU's. 7.2.9 or 7.3, however, are ok. Since you're able to access the menu, you're ok.

Could be corrupted burn. Don't do anything with computer while it's burning CD. Close all other apps even messenger. Turn off USB/PnP-aware OS in BIOS.

7.1 is more compatible, IM experience.

Thanks, everyone, for your help. I think I narrowed down the problem. I am 95% sure that the guy that burned these for me at work didn't do anything special....like burn the disk image. I think he just copied the files over. He had never used Linux before, so I think that this is the problem. On Monday I am going to ask some of the other guys in the office who use Linux for their help in getting good install disks, and if all else fails, I am going to just bring home the retail version of the Red Hat 7.2 install disks. So, thanks for helping!