I'm probably missing something very basic, but as a newbie to this I don't have a clue. I want to install Red Hat 7.2 on a new hard drive from three disk that I got from school seven years ago. I'm booting from the CDROM. The first screen to come up gives me the option to start the install in graphic mode, text mode, low resolution, etc. No matter what option I choose I get a screen that apparently shows everything it probed and then stops there. Nothing else happens. When we did this in school I remember that it went through a series of questions about the hardware. What do I need to do to proceed? I'm using a 945P-A ECS motherboard, LGA775 2.66GHz Pentium processor, and 1GB of DDR RAM. The last screen displayed is pretty lengthy but if it helps here goes.

Unknown bridge resource 2: assuming transparent
PCI: Using IRQ router default [8086/27b8]at00:1f.0
Linux NET 4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET 3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
ptt:256 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08 with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
ttys00 at 0x03f8 (irq=4) is a 16550a
ttys01 at 0x02f8 (irq=3) is a 16550a
block:1024 slot per queue, batch=256
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
PCI_IDE: unknown IDE controller on PCI bus00 device f9, VID=8086, DID=27df
PCIevice 00:1f.1 not available because of resource collisions
PCI_IDE: (ide_setup_pci_deviceCould not enable device
PCI_IDE: unknown IDE controller on PCI bus00 device fa
PCI_IDE: chipset revision 1
PCI_IDE: 100% native mode on irq 11
ide0: BM-DMA at 0xe400-0xe407, BIOS settings: hdaMA, hdbMA
ide1: BM-DMA at 0xe408-0xe40f, BIOS settings:
hdcio, hddio
hda:PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-218L, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdb:Hitachi HDS721010cla332, ATA DISK drive

RH 7.2 is ancient, and I would guess that some part of the disk hardware did not exist back in that time. I'm assuming that the disk controller/disk is unsupported by that ancient software, and so won't work.

Why not just grab an up-to-date copy of Centos or Scientific Linux (which are directly derived from RH and, except for logos and the like, will be largely indistinguishable from the relevant release of RH), which will have a better chance of working with your hardware?

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edit: always assuming that you really want something like RH in the first place; other distros do exist, and maybe if you say something about your requirements, other recommendations would be sensible, too.

I thank you for the info, it definitely makes sense. I'll try a newer distro.