I cannot get Mandrake 8.2 to install from the CD. I have set my bios to start from the CD and still have had no success. I have even tried to boot from a boot disk(floppy) that I created but in both cases get the same message. "CDROM disc does not seem to be a Mandrake Linux installation CDROM. Retry with another disc."
I was provided another disk thinking that the first one was missing some files but am seeing the same problem. The people that I purchased the disks from assured me that they had tested the disks and that they had installed on their box. They aslo said that my hardware may not be suppoted. I have a Dell Dimesion XPS T 700. (Pentium 3 700 Mghz) I am wanting to install Mandrake on my second hard drive that I have already partitioned with Partition Magic. Any help would really be appreciated for this Newbie.!!

You might want to try it out with a boot floppy. I remember that SuSe 7.0 came with an installation boot floppy, if it doesn't start...
If your hardware isn't supported, there isn't much you can do as far as I know.
I know that tere is a website that can tell you wether your hardware works with Linux, but you shouldn't have problem with regular IDE CD-Roms. Unfortunatelly, I forgot the address of it.... may be a google search will help.
SuSe has a good hardware database at http://hardwaredb.suse.de/index.php?LANG=en_UK . May be you want to check there. If it works with SuSe, you have good chances that it works with Mandrake too. I somehow can't figure your system specs at Dell, so I can't help you further.
To make sure that your CD's work fine, test them with another machine.
That's all I can think of for now.... hope it helps

If you have enough space, you could try making an iso file of the CD and copying it to the root of one of your Windows drives. You should then be able to do a harddisk install (of cource, presuming that your hardware is supported...but I would have thought it is).

pfayman:

I had exactly the same problem. I bought a 3 CDR set of Mandrake 8.2 online. I tried to boot from the install CDR. No dice. I made a boot floppy and tried to install from there. No dice. The install routine choked on the CDR and popped up the same error message that you're getting. I ended up having a friend with a fat pipe download me the 3 CD distribution and burn it. Installed like a charm off of the new set. You probably got bad cdr's like me. Don't be discouraged. Try again with new cd's.

1611AV out...