I've tried to install Mandrake, Red Hat 7.3 & Slackware 9 onto a PII 350 machine with 64 M RAM and 30G HD.

I get errors on each installation -

Red Hat - just stops and says I don't have enough disk space or my media isn't working right or have hardware issues.

Mandrake just freezes in the middle of the install

Slackware actually installed but then hung up in while starting x.

Is it my hd? is there a way to test the drive before tossing it for a new one?

Is it the motherboard?

How can I access and determine where the problem may lie?

Thanks for any help.

update: just got a *new* error while trying to load mandrake. "gzip: stdin: invalid compressed data--length error" -- ayy, ya, ya!

Try replacing thte RAM. I had a PC that did things like that and it was te RAM.

Yeah, I go along with 'bad' memory stick. Another thing you can do, is download memtest 3.0, write it to a formatted floppy and 'test' your memory. You shouldn't see any errors on the test. If so, you can spend 20 bucks at circuit city for bestbuy and get a stick of memory for that computer (if still available, I think they take pc100 memory). Take the memory with you to the store, then you have an example of what you want.
Another way is to get a 'linux boot disk' (floppy) and try booting that into the console, if that works, then maybe you got a bad cdrom reader. Maybe a long q-tip and alcohol can clean the LED.
(of course, you do any of this at your own risk).
URL http://www.memtest86.com/
http://www.techtv.com/screensavers/a...231059,00.html

Or, you can make a windows boot disk and check out your hard drive if you need to do it that way:
http://www.bootdisk.com/bootdisk.htm
I hope some of this will get you on your way!

I had a server at work that would do lock up every once in a while. We had just installed dual CPU's. First I thought that it was the memory, but then I yanked the CPU's and replaced them with the original and everything worked fine.