Being new to Linux, I'd thought I give mandrake 9.2 a try. But every time I try to install I get this message.

"Could not uncompress second stage ramdisk. This is probably a hardware error while reading the data. (this maybe caused by a hardware failure or Linux kernel bug)."

So after downloading disk 1 a few more times I learned it was not a bad download. The checksum was fine all 4 times of downloading disk 1. So I tired knoppix and it works fine on my PC. However, still no luck with mandrake. And after trying it will 2 different CDROMs still not working. Any one know what might be causing this?

Just a thought, since Mandrake is complaining of a possible hardware error...

Maybe you've got some bad RAM somewhere?

I'm not sure how much RAM you have but if you've got enough to spare you might try each memory module individually...or, if you've got a willing friend, try his/her RAM in your machine.

I've heard that bad RAM can be kind of weird like this. That is, another OS may run happily forever with it but when an OS (or a program) tries to use the bad RAM in just the "wrong" way it will cause errors.

Cheers,
Bob

I've had similar problems. However... if you just start the boot off your second CD things should work from then on.