Unable to boot from kernal
 

I have tried using verious distros on my machine. I have tried the live cds for puppy, DSL, ubuntu, pclinuxOS, and centOS. Each time it will go to the install/load screen from boot and work fine. But when i try to actually load or install it, it will say rebooting from kernal or loading kernal, or some veriation of that message. When it reboots, though, it goes thru the normal reboot process and straight back to the install/load screen. This cycle repeats continuously.

Any help is greatly appreciated!!!
Thx

P.S. (My original intent was to download a linux distro to my external harddrive so I could use it on various systems)

Take out the disk

In case masonm is not clear to you, he means that take that ###### live cd out of your CD drive; so that system doesn't boots again from that liveCD.:D

I tried that...
when i took out the live cd it booted it's normal way to minXP.
I tried it with a blank, formatted, 20GB hdd but it didn't do anything when i rebooted with the cd out of the drive.

sry...i mean winXP

Where did you install the bootloader to?

Hi
I think u r using sata HDD.
Regards
Damanjeet
linuxtechmate.com

Use qparted, gparted or mandriva's MCC mount-points manager, in order to know what is the "partition name" for your windows and your linux partitions. HDA1, HDB2, for instance.

Then check in your lilo/grub configuration if their configuration is correct...

The 5 distros you mentioned are among the others in my box. There is no problem of installing any of them.

My guess is that you haven't installed any of them yet. On booting up a LiveCD you have to run its "installer" which is available in the desktop labelled as "HD-Install" for example.

If you get an installer working it will want to know which partition you wish the LInux to reside in, the choice of boot loader, its location, etc, etc.....

That's just it...I can't get any of the installers working

Since you can run LiveCD so how about use cfdisk to create two partitions, one type 83 for Linux installation and another type 82 for Swap, in the hard disk.

You can then tell the installer to install the distro into the partitions nominated by you.

If you have a problem of not able to install a Linux one of the reasons is the hard disk having corrupted partition table. In such a case an installer will walk away. However do a
should reveal all the errors if any.

By the way you are not using RAID, are you?

No Im using SATA

Then I can tell you at least Puppy and DSL do not support Sata, not yet anyway.

On booting the LiveCD do a
If Sata isn't shown then move on to the next distro.

Thx
I'll give it a try