First, some history in case it's relevant:

I never had an issue with either of my 2 CD devices before, but I encountered a bug (?!) when installing Ubuntu, and my XP was destroyed. Ubuntu installed successfully and seemed to work ok thereafter but I really want a dual boot system.

Now, I have installed XP & RHL 9, the only way I could get them to install is to use a boot diskette. The installation cd's aren't recognized by either of my two CD devices. However, when I use the boot diskettes, either CD device works fine for the install.

I want to overlay RHL 9 with Fedora 9 since my computer display is newer than my RHL 9 monitor definitions, and my graphics don't work at all with RHL 9!

So my question is, (a) is there a way to make a boot diskette to work with Fedora 9, and/or (b) does anyone know a way for me to fix my bios, or GRUB, etc., so I can get my CD devices to work, and install Fedora 9 over RHL 9?

Thanks!

I wonder.... are you sure your first boot device is set to CD? cause I have never seen such a thing happen.

Would be my suggestion as well.

It should also be very easy to adjust your X configuration to get the correct monitor settings in there.
But if you use RH9 to access the internet, it's indeed a good time to upgrade as RH9 is no longer supported.

My boot settings are, in this order:
1 IDE CD-ROM Device
2 Diskette Drive
3 Hard Drive C:

And, each of these has a check mark in front of it, so it's "enabled".

(Should I pursue booting from the hard drive? I'm using an i386 machine so I'm not sure whether that's an option).

Are you sure your xp was destroyed, or just not bootable?

What exact processor are you running? Fedora will not run on anything older than a Pentium.

Do you have two Cd drives plugged in at the same time? A lot of old machines cannot handle this (for bootup). If this is the case I would unplug one and try the install again.

If you are using a rewritable disk a lot of the older players cannot boot to them.

I am 99.9% sure it actually wiped out the partition, and reinstalled just Ubuntu on the entire hard drive.

I found this bug at Ubuntu's site:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/17346

1. Intel Pentium, 2.2 ghz, 640meg of Ram.

2. Yes, I unplugged one and will try that. Now, in XP at least, it brings up the new CD info. Before it didn't, so this is goodness. (This is a system cd, not one I created.)

3. Oh, ok, I'll create a CD-R, but first I'd like to know if you recommend any special Linux downloads based on my pc's age and resources?

I think I have the solution here. My DVD drive (in Windows) is denoted by "D:" and that is alphabetically less than my CD drive which is denoted by "E:". (I also unplugged my extra CD drive, too).

I can put CD-RW CD's in my first (DVD) drive and it recognizes these as it's supposed to. I'm installing Fedora 9 now.

Sorry to bother you with this error, Thanks for your responses!

If it is a 2.2ghz then it has to be a Pentium 4 and not just a Pentium. So you should be fine for cpu and ok for ram.

If unplugging the other CD drive got the XP going, I would try the Fedora CD before burning a new one(a P4 era CD drive should have no issue with rewriteables).

Thanks again for your help, and, the CD-RW's worked great for the install!