IM INSTALLING LINUX ON A SECOND HARDDRIVE IN A WIN2K SYSTEM AND GET AN ERROR....UNABLE TO DECOMPRESS SECOND STAGE RAMDISK.....THEN THE INSTALL STOPS AT THAT POINT. HAVE TRIED OTHER DISTRIBUTIONS OF LINUX AND GET SAME RESULT. THIS IS AFTER PARTITIONING THE HARDDRIVE.
ANY SUGGESTIONS????

OK, let's just clarify. You only started getting this message after you repartitioned your harddisk with Linux already on it, yeah?

NEITHER HARDDRIVE HAVE LINUX ON IT YET. STILL TRYING. HAVE USED FDISK, PARTITION MAGIC AND DISK DRUID TO PARTITION THE HARDDRIVE. THE PARTITION GOES WELL. WHEN I INSERT THE DISK TO START THE INSTALL OF LINUX I GET THAT ERROR MESSAGE NO MATTER WHAT VERSION OF LINUX I TRY. IVE TRIED TEXT INSTALL ALSO AND STILL GET THE SAME ERROR. COULD IT BE A BAD HARDDRIVE?? IT WORKS WELL UNDER FAT32 IN WIN2K.

Sounds like you've downloaded some bad ISO files. You should d/load them in binary format if you can, and always do the checksums thing aswell. It may burn OK, and the files may appear to be alright, but the contents of the files may be corrupt with a bad download.

Just to be on the safe side, if at all possible, find someone who'se happy to be a guinnea pig and try installing the CDs onto their machine.

found this on a site.. about decompress ramdisk errors.. it can be maybe be of three things..

The error messages suggest that your ramdisk image is corrupted.
1. Bootloader is not loading image completely or correctly
2. Ramdisk is bad to begin with
3. Hardware problems on the target (SDRAM probably) causing ramdisk image to be read incorrectly.

That is all I can provide as I can't find or know of a work around this problem. But if it does this on any machine, it has to be the cd's, if its just that one machine.. its possibly a hardware issue.. maybe ram...

I DONT THINK ITS DISK'S... THEY ARE NOT COPIES AND THEY INSTALL ON SOME OTHER MACHINES I HAVE 95, 98, AND ME ON FINE. IS RAMDISK MY SDRAM OR PART OF THE HARDDRIVE USED AS MEMORY??? OH, I HAVE ALSO TRIED OTHER RAM AND GET THE SAME RESULT. ?????????

HAD TO USE ALTERNATE CDROM.IMG TO BOOT TO INSTALL..... COULD NOT BOOT TO INSTALL OFF THE CD...... COPIED CDROM.IMG TO FLOOPY THEN BOOTED FROM FLOOPY AND PROMTED TO PUT IN MANDRAKE CD TO INSTALL......SO FAR SO GOOD!!!!