I'm trying to load this as a new install but get system disk error all the time do i need a startup disk
cheers dave

Can you post a little bit detail of your system configuration and error itself?
Otherwise our penguins have no clue.

Hi .Have loaded mandrake 10 ok but when i download setup programs i cant find out where to or how to install + cant find out how to get to my cd rom
cheers Dave

That's Mandarake specific. Usually, it is written in manual or web page (how to install or something)

Sorry, I have no experience.

I only used Mandriva briefly about a year ago, but I might be able to help some.

What are the files you downloaded? If they're not rpm files you may be having problems. If they are rpms there are ways to install them but I don't remember exactly, I think it's rpm -i [name of file]. An easier way would be to use the package manager, which is called urpmi. Unless the newest version changed much, you'll probably want to do a little bit of configuring to make it work. This site may be helpful for this.

For the cd, the files are usually in a folder called something like either /mnt/cdrom or /media/cdrom. You'll probably need to mount the cd though, this is basically just telling your computer to make a drive active. You can do this from the command line by typing "mount /mnt/cdrom" or whatever it's called in Mandriva. It may require root (administrator) privileges to do this, but can easily be configured to be available for a regular user. It's also probably possible to mount from the file browser, usually by right-clicking on the folder and selecting mount from the menu.