I have downloaded the iso files for mandrake 9 but when i try to burn the first file it wont burn correctly. i have used adaptec 2.0 on my 98 box and nero 5.5 on my win 2000 box niether will work.
is there a way to check an ISO file to see if it works correctly? Has any else incountered this problem? Any help on this will be very much appreciated . i am a complete newbie to linux.

You should calculate the checksums and look if the images were downloaded correctly. Inside Windows md5summer will help you (www.md5summer.org).

I just got this to work...
You have to burn the image as an iso. When you go to chose the file to burn, chose the iso file. Don't extract it, like I did, and then burn it. Burn it as an iso. Hope this helps...

Yes linda is correct, do not burn the iso as data or one file, you must burn it using the option as 'image' under nero, to know if you have done this correctly, if there is one file for eg. mandrake-9.0beta.iso you did it wrong, if its a bunch of files, well then bingo!

ALSO as noted on the Mandy d/l webpage:
You will need the 700mb CDR's for this version.

Cool

Yes, you need a 700 mb size cd. I had burned it to a cd-rw that was only 650. Can you use a cdrw for this? I don't know, I only had regular cd-r's at the bigger size.

As for looking at the cd to see if there are a lot of files, mine did have a lot of files but it wasn't an iso image so it didn't work. I can't use nero like everyone suggests, because it doesn't support my burner. So it was a lot of trial and error finding a program that would burn correctly on my computer. Now I'm using Veritas Stomp, which is the same as the HP MyCD program that comes with some cd burners. It works well so far...

Sure, but some BIOS's don't recognize CDRW's, but it's worth a shot.