I need help. it seems no matter what distro i try, or live cd or anything i keep getting errors. im beginning to think its hardware and not my distros, unless i have downloaded 10 or 12 buggered up files.

LFS Live 6.0 disk - when i restart pc, i come up with the lfs splash and hit enter to boot.... it scrolls tons of stuff on my monitor then says ide timeout or something like that, with tons of irq read errors. < I ordered and this is happening with the disk that they sent me >

Kubuntu 5.10 - i have downloaded and reburned at least 3 times... same thing every time... goes thru live boot up and installation, then tells me to reboot and remove disk. it comes up and installs packages... at around 68% - 75% it just freezes.

Mandrake 10.1 DVD iso - same as lfs, irq errors all over the place then freezes with ide timeout.

Heres my hardware

Chaintech ZNF3 250 Socket 754 with Athlon 64 3400 Newcastle
Radeon 9600xt 256mb video
1024 megs of ram, not sure of brand
Aopen DVD Rom Drive. never had a problem with it in windows. and it seems to have no problem with these disks on my other pc
Typhoon heat sink 120m fan. Heat is not a problem
80gig & 160gig... both seagate 8mb cache ide drives

any ideas? do i need to change settings in my bios or shoudl i just give up on this pc for linux?

It looks to me like your RAM is shot; I had a similar problem once and switched out the RAM and everything was fine.

i replaced the ram about a month ago, i had one 512 stick, i bought 2 new 512s and even windows is solidly stable with it. does linux use ram differently? also checked it, i bought mushkin green line ddr if that matters

To fix IRQ errors...

boot: linux noapic acpi=off irqpoll

Many LiveCD distros like Mepis (and I think Knoppix) allow you to run a memory test as a boot option, without installing any software.

I don't know if you have a memory problem. I'm just offering a way of diagnosis incase you wish to find out.