Hello all, I'm very new to the linux thing (mdk will be my second try with a distro after Lindows 4.5, which at times felt more like an advertisement for their click'n'run service than an OS) and I'm having some trouble installing MDK 10 community ed.

My first problem was the cd refusing to boot on either of my drives - no problem on this though, as I made a boot floppy using the dosutils and figured I was on my way.

My second problem is a bit more annoying - the installation program freezes on me every time. After I select my language, and agree to the license agreement, the installer just hangs. Mouse/keyboard stop responding etc - it's frozen solid. I have a feeling this has something to do with the 'security" step itself but don't have any clue how to fix it.

Any ideas? Should I make a new CD and try again?

Sounds more like a hardware issue to me. But you will want to check the md5sum of the disk against the mandrake list. Before we could be of much help, you may want to give us more information on your setup. The solution may entail booting with the rescue option, so that you can use tools such as lspci and lsmod. I think that it's hanging at the disk formatting section.
When it was booting, were there a lot of messages about ide interupt problems. If so, use the boot option noacpi.
Remembering back on my install, on second thought, the mouse setup is the next item. What mouse and keyboard are you using.
Before USB was better supported, I had to change the keyboard during the setup phase. This shouldn't be a problem now, but maybe you setup is something fancy like wireless.

I checked the md5sums, they check out OK, as did the Bittorrent hash when I finished downloading the files.

My current setup:

Shuttle AK31A KT266a MB
AMD Athlon XP 1800+
768mb DDR RAM
nVidia GeForce 3 TI w/ 64mb DDR
HD1: Maxtor 40GB
HD2: WD 120GB
CD1: Lite-On 32x12x40 CD-RW
CD2: Lite-On DVD-ROM

Keyboard: just a very simple compaq keyboard I picked up at radioshack
Mouse: Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical (USB)

OS: Currently WinXP/LindowsOS dual boot, but I plan on having MDK overwrite the partition that LOS is on.

I will have to read up on how to use rescue mode - I'm new to Linux. I will try the noacpi option- although I don't remember any IDE errors suppose I could have just missed them.

http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/install100.html

Using this site as a guide, my problem is between the "license term" screen and the "install type" screen.


EDIT: I tried the "noacpi" boot option, to no avail. I also tried burning another copy of the install disk, on the off chance that it was a bad burn, also to no avail. I'm looking into rescue mode now.