My problem is I had Mandrake Powerpack 8.1 and i downloaded Mandrake 9.2 to upgrade it and the first disc works but it turns out that disc 2 and 3 didn't burn right. (they are still in .iso format on the cd) so the first disc installed and it runs but a lot of the programs don't work and it's pretty buggy. I want to reinstall it but i ran out of cd-rs.. I was wondering if there was a way to run it from within linux so i can just run it from mounted isos, or if there was a way I could instruct the install to look for cd2 and cd3 at the mounted iso's instead of the cd rom drive. i would appreciate any help i get, i am new to this whole linux thing. thanks.

You can mount your iso-file with: mount -t iso9660 -o loop,ro whatever.iso /mnt/whatever

If you have a good Internet connection it's probably easier to use urpmi.addmedia and add packages via ftp. There is a nice site that helps you to do this here: http://urpmi.org/easyurpmi/index.php

thank you rokka, i know how to mount the iso, i'm just having trouble trying to get the install to recognize that it's on the mounts instead of in the cd-rom drive.
i'll try that urpmi, thank you