This is something that I should really be able to do myself - but it has me totally stumped. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

I currently run WinME on nice powerful processor with 256mb or RAM. Both I and my girlfriend are getting annoyed at the constant patching and repatching MS do - this won't turn into an anti-MS rant, BTW - the constant lock ups and crashes are also annoying and so we thought we'd try a more stable OS. Our choice XP or Linux. We did consider Lindows, but the cost is prohibitive. Having tinkered with Mandrake pre7.1 days, I thought I'd download it. The plan is to run it under Windows for a while (pause for abuse) - I know it's a bit silly but it's just so we can to get to grips with it and see what we may need to consider when full installing. This is a long winded way of getting to our problem but.....

Having spent a couple of hours getting the iso images of all 3 cds, I started to create the cds. Using Easy CD Creator 5.3 and a Sony CD Writer and a Sony 650mb CD-R I was able to create disk 3 with no problems. Using the same hardware but a TDK 700mb cd-r I tried to do disks 1+2 - this is where I get the problems: although it appears to burn ok, it takes as long to finalise as it does to burn and at the end I am left with .... an empty cd. I have set it to Disk At Once (DAO) and have tried changing the write speed from 4x to 2x, still no luck.

Before I rant and stamp around the house and try to see if I can find and buy some Sony 700mb CD-Rs, can anyone give me any pointers as to a way around this. I know CD-Rs are cheap, but I hate to waste money.

Many, many thanks in advance.

Ray

Well, no-one likes to waste money.

Just a few obvious checks:
Made sure the creator program knows it's a 700Mb CD not 650Mb?
Made sure you're burning the ISO onto disk not the ISO image?

Also, the third CD will not be important - probably a CD of source files. Some CD-Rs are just not reliable unfortunately and the branding (TDK, Sony etc.) often has little to do with the actual manufacturer of the CD!

You say you tried to do disks 1+2? Is that because they were each say ... 350Mb each? Is that what you tried to do?

If so that won't work - these are bootable CDs so they need a bootable filesystem - two ISO images on one disk will confuse the computer (I think you might already know this).

Bert

Postscript: Oh, and if you're using Linux and you've searched here and can't find the answer, you're questions quite valid - it's best to put the title of the problem in the post, so it can be indexed for future reference

Bert

Thanks for the post - I should have typed more clearly, neither cd 1 nor cd 2 would burn, seperately.

Gonna try again

Bert ...

http://www.geekcode.com/geek.html

And, believe it or not, I spend HEAPS of time outside ;)

Cheers,
Tink

Picked up a couple of Sony cd-r disks today, will try them. Otherwise I'll just find a magazine with a distro and try that.

Thanks for your help.

Try using something like CD space+ or virtual CD to browse the ISO image and copy them manually.

Or you could try another software like Nero (download it, downlaod the crack and then delete it cuz it's illegal.... )

Hope it helped

Save the penguin

make sure your burning program is not doing a burn simulation... check the settings to make sure "simulate" is not turned on. Also, get Nero. www.ahead.de

You shouldn't try to run linux under windows i.e. with VMware. It will work, but you should have a second hard drive or partition and install it on there. Dual booting is the best option if you're just curious about linux. I'm currently dual booting XP and redhat 8. XP has been locking up on me lately... browsing the web or other things causes the system to just stop responding. Whatever was in service pack 1 really fucked up the system. I just hit the reset button, boot into linux and get some real work done.

Thanks to all who offered help - I found a Mandrake 8.2 install cd and so gave up and am now dual booting ME and Mndrake 8.2.

All I need to do now is set up my USB cable modem and I'm sorted!!

hahaha... Mandrake 8.2 and USB... I've had a few problems with that... I had a wireless card and I spent 2 months trying to make it work... I couldn't.Then I gave up and traded it for a ethernet common card and a sound card (sound Blaster 5.1 live)... very good deal for me...

then I've found a tutorial on how to make that hardware work with mandrake... but I had a SB 5.1Live... I was happier with that than with the lame network adapter...

Save the penguin

Quick update - in case anyone is interested - 8.2 went on easily, did all partitioning and left Windoze working. Downloaded Nero, same problem with burning the cd - although the MD5sum came back correctly I think that there may be a problem. Never mind.

As it's Sunday and I can't be bothered to trek over to the computer shops in my area (think I have the flu), I need to either get into my loft or go to the Homebase round the corner to grab a network cable and then I should be able to use Mandy as God intended!!

Thanks for your help.

Ok. try downloading the ISO again, perhaps it is corrupted. I've never had any trouble burning Mandrake's CD's.

If you are in the UK, I'll burn and send a set of RH disks to you... No charge! I know how frustrating getting a good copy can be!

Thank god for linux mediacheck - no more [disk 3 corrupt] arrrgh!

lemme know.

Bleah-man - thanks for the offer. If it's not too much trouble I'll take you up on it.

Which version of RH? - I haven't really looked at it since v5.something......

Thanks again

good start would be mailing me at bleahman@geekit.net

The newest RH version is 8.0 and I think it compares to Mandrake 9.0 in user-friendlyness and it is RedHat (it has a better support) I think this distro would be the best for you.