Hi, I'm a total newbie, just tried to install Mandriva Linux 2006 on my dell after successfully installing it on an older machine.

I got the following error straight away.

"warning, installation of driver failed (please include msg from <alt-F3> for bugreprts)"

how come it didn't work on my newer machine?

many thanks in advance

Can't say how come it didn't work.

Which driver failed?
What hardware does it apply to?
Did you have the same hardware on the other system?

That's all it says. There's no info about what hardware it applies to.

My old machine was a celeron whereas my new one is a pentium dual core 2.8.

Did you see this error while running the installation?

If so, press [CTRL]-[ALT]-[F#] where # is the function key between 1 and 12, excluding F7 which will bring you back to the GUI. The installation will print diagnostics to one of the terminals.

This error came up at the very start of installation, immediately after pressing enter to start install.

None of the F keys do anything even with CTRL+ALT pressed down. It seems to just lock up.

You will probably need to provide more information on which Dell computer you own.

If this is a dual core intel processor, try booting with the "noapic" boot option.
If you don't have a multiprocessor, this shouldn't hurt at all.

Sorry, but I really am a newbie! How do I boot with the "noapic" option?

If it helps, my computer is the following:

Dell Dimension 5150
Pentium D 2.8 Dual Core
2 SATA Hard drives
1024 Ram
Windows XP Home SP2

Thanks

From the initial boot menu, there may either be a line to enter boot options, or something like "F12 Other".

Look at the options at the bottom of the screen. If you don't see any try the "Escape" key.
When you get a line you can type in, enter "noapic".

If you explore the CD without booting from it, there may be a README file explaining what other options you can try.
For example "nodma" and "noacpi" are used when booting in the safe mode. The "nodma" option will really slow down the install process. It turns of the DMA mode on the floppy and hard drives.

Here is an edited line from my "safe mode" grub entry:
vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume edd=off

Thanks for all the help, I don't seem to have any additional boot options, certainly nowhere with a line to enter any instructions. I think I'll give up on this for now.

Can anyone suggest a different copy of linux that might not have these driver issues?

Try the escape key. This may reveal the option line.
You might try SuSE. There are some computers that just have problems. I used to have a compaq desktop. SuSE at the time wouldn't read from the cdrom, but Mandrake was OK, so I installed Mandrake at the time. I think this was around Mandrake 6.1.