Hi, When I tried to install RH 7.3 on my 32Mb, Pentium MMX last nite, everything went smoothly until after I make the 'package selection' and it says 'formatting' but then nothing happens, it just frozed. Then i try to reinstall again but this time it says the cdrom not recognised. I do not have any OS on the pc, so everytime i try to boot using the red hat cdrom, it says 'missing operating system'. So I then try using the boot disk which works but the following error showed:

cramfs: wrong magic
FAT: unable to read boot sector
isofs_read_super: bread failed, dev=09:00, iso_blknum=16, block=32
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on 09:00
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Please tell me what I did wrong.

Many thanks!
cmlo

It seems that an error in the formatting process has left your drive unreadable; that's why the Kernel panic message appears - it can't find a file system, that's why it can't mount root. That would not explain why your CD-ROM is not recognised, though. Your CD-ROM being visible is a function of the BIOS, not the OS. At the boot stage, it is the BIOS that decides which device will boot the computer, depending on the order set in the BIOS and whether which device in the list is the first one to contain a boot sector.

Have you been fiddling in the BIOS, making changes to the boot order? Have you been fiddling with the cables to the CD-ROM drive? Even if you haven't, check that the CD-ROM is listed before the hard disk in the boot order in the BIOS, and double-check that the physical connections to the CD-ROM are OK.

Once you get the CD-ROM booting, you should be able to use the RH CD to fix your computer by re-installing. Other than this general advice, I have not much else to offer - I don't have much experience of RH.

Geoff.

many thanks Geoff. I borrowed another cdrom from a fren and the installation went OK until the part of installing packages, then it hang. Then i reboot and reinstall, this time checking for bad blocks which showed a huge amount of errors. So i have decided the pc is useless or does anyone have suggestion on wat else can I play it with? Thanks.

OK, bad blocks is another kettle of fish. It could be serious, or it could be minor; the only way to be sure is to use a hard disk checking program to scan for errors. If there's not too many, the program can mark them so they won't be used again, then the disk is usable again. How long for is hard to tell; the only way to know is to try and see how the hard disk goes after it's been 'repaired'. If errors don't show up later on, then it was only minor, and it's OK to press on with using it. If errors show up again, then it's a good indication that the disk is on the way out and it's probably better to cut your losses and get another one. A good program to use is gwscan, from the Gateway site here:

http://support.gateway.com/support/d...=all&chkWord=1

I suggest you get version 5.07. gwscan is made by Maxtor (from memory) but will happily work on other brands.

If you can get your hard drive free of errors, it might be worth your while to persist with installing Linux on your computer.

Good luck,

Geoff.

Thanks geoff for your suggestion. I will look up on it.
In the mean time, I'm studying for my C++ and find them pretty difficult!