Well I tried numerous different bios options to see why this is happening. Turned off dma and even went into a safe mode
but nothing changes. I'm getting the lost interrupt. Its a WD 30 gig hard drive. once it does
get through after about 10 minutes of doing that it hangs on finding the cd. tried both my cd drives
I tried text install, mem=, expert but can't get the interrupt problem cured. Even tried 2.4 kernel and that didn't
work. I have 8.2 installed now but really want the new kernel for sound compatability.

Thanks
Chad

Have you checked to make sure the jumpers on the CD and HDD are set correctly? No cable-select, master/slave set up right?

If you're running some ancient hardware (ISA or older) they can tie up a needed interrupt.

Could you be a bit more specific about what error messages and where they're appearing?
Has this drive + motherboard worked together before?

might sound obvious but have you tried noapic in the boot install command line?

got it to work with "expert noapic" thanks for the help

Thanks heaps - that solved my problems with the same thing.

Now, as a confessed half-newbie... can you tell me what was going on / how it fixed it?

if you have one of these motherboard, you'll have to start your linux install with the option linux noapic acpi=no and then udma=no if it doesn't work.
that's all .

It was the same thing with the mandrake 9.2 .