I treid installing 2 distributions on a new system I put together and I get the same message from both while decompressing i get this message

Invalid compressed format (err=2)

System halted.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.
The system is
A_bit mobo model KV8-MASX3
with an amd athlon 64 3200 processor
1 gig crucial ram
ATI radeon 6900pro video card
and plextor cd dvd rw
200 gig maxtor hard drive.
I have tried loading 64 bit mandrake 10.1 and 64 bit fedora core 3.
Both with the same results.

Thanks again buggsy59

Hi, and welcome to LQ!

Please assist us in helping you, give us more
info? :) Like in what failed, did you get any error
messages?


Cheers,
Tink

The error message happens as the system is booting from the cd. I tried several ways it always fails, the sequence is 1 start booting, 2 install splash screen (press enter to install of F1 for options) 3 decomressing linux $ (here is the error message)
Error decompressing linux

Invalid compressed format (err=2)

System halted.

The system then needs a power cycle to get anything to respond.

Hmmm....sounds like thumbprints on the CDs
or just as likely and annoying: a crappy CDreader, dirt on lenz/weak laser.
I have found that DVD/CD combos seem to have better reading abilities,
For example, a CD formatted on my crappy CREATIVE CDdrive is unreadable
on that drive, but is easily read on my DVD burner.
For what its worth, I have had alot of problems with CDdrives (&drivers).
If you can exchange it for a different brand you might be ok.

Also, if you are wondering what Distribution to try, while you still can choose,
You can have the best of both worlds by usling the VLOL auto install of Gentoo.
Yes - have your cake and eat it too: Get the best version of Linux, but skip the
incredibly painful manual install!
(Its still painful, but not as bad as trying to install Gentoo from the command line)

Ok I got this one.... Believe it or not it was the plextor cd-dvd drive, I pulled this drive out of the box and replaced it with an older cd-rom drive and the install kicked off without an issue. I guess I was just going to hardware heavy at install time. I may be back to ask about options to get this dvd burner working once I get more comfortable with the new (to me at least) OS. Thanks for your time , I hope someone else can learn something from my trials.

...hmmm actually, I also noticed that DVDs don't play music CDs as well in windows.
So perhaps a DVD is not the best choice for a BOOT CD...glad you solved your problem!