I've looked at other threads with this question, but I can't seem to get the answer I want. So here it goes.

So I downloaded all 3 isos (10 official), unzipped them, and burned the files that were unzipped on a cds. I restart and they won't boot from the cd. I use the floppy, it boots, but for some reason the install either won't detect the cd drive, or not the cd. Did I maybe burn the cd wrong? Or is it not recognizing both of my drives? And yes I've tried booting from all 3 cds.

Specs:
Athlon 2400
512mb ddr ram
Geforce 4 TI 4200
80gb hd
Liteon CDRW
Mad Dog Dvd Drive
Win XP Pro

not booting from cd: check your BIOS boot order. I've also seen come cheap cd drives not be able to handle boot from cd...

but just to make sure it's a problem with the CD itself, and not the system -- pull out your XP cd and see if it boots.

Xp cd has always booted. And my bios order is fine.

did you check the MD5 hashes on the CDs? do you know they are valid?

Confused?


BTW I have aim sn UDaNerd310 if you want to talk to me from there.

where are you downloading from?
or what distro?

Linux Mandrake 10 Official from linux-mandrake.com

See: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=243446

Still confused here. What are these md5 thingys for? What do I do with them?

See: http://www.tohoku.ricoh.co.jp/barcod...h/md5help.html

So the test is fine. What does this mean?
Plus dude, I appreciate your help, but giving me a bunch of links on how to do this and that doesn't fully help me. It's hard to understand the postitive test results if I don't even know what I'm testing. It would be nice to know like why the hell this has anything to do with anything. I mean ive downloaded older versions of mandrake in the past, and I've never done things like this to install it.

The MD5 test verifies the consistency of the downloaded image.

If it passed the test you can rest assured that the download is ok.

This eliminates one possible cause for the problem you are having.

Finding solutions to your problem(s) involves a methodical step by step process which -YOU- must undertake.

That is you have to get YOURSELF "up to speed" on what could be wrong.

Providing the links gets you to read up on the things that you should have read up on instead of posting "what is MD5". The latter is answered in all of those links without requiring those of us with an interest in helping you, to needlessly retype everything.

Don't complain when someone provides you with something that requires more work on your part. What do you expect?

Now that you have determined that the download is ok, you can move on.

Did you compare the download image against the burned CD?

Are you trying to install Mandake using the SAME CD burner that you created the disk on?

If not, that is you are moving the CD from one system to another, this alone could be to blame.

It also may be possible that given your configuration, the CDROM is indeed not being recognized by Mandrake once the kernel loads from the CD.

In other words, your CD or CD configuration may not be supported by the kernel or you may have a "brain dead" drive.

So which is it?

I'm not clarivoyant nor have a crystal ball that lets me see your configuration, so you have to do the detective work yourself.

And part of this involves reading up on things like the MD5 commands, etc.

These forums are great when you are stuck on something, as someone can give you a hint or suggestion that may get you past a barrier.

But don't expect the a complete handholding.