I'm hoping y'all can help. I know many peeps have posted their questions, but I'm a complete NOOB. I've never installed Linux before, and I've heard how easy and user-friendly Mandrake 9.1 is. Therefore, I downloaded the ISO images of the first 2 CD's. I then:

1) Created a boot diskette using the rawritewin and copied the cdrom.img file to it.
2) Booted to the floppy since my WinXP won't boot to the CD for some reason (I think my CD may be unbootable, but tried both and neither works). I also disabled PnP in my BIOS and changed the boot order to CD, floppy, then HDD.
3) The computer boots to the floppy just fine, but when it attempts to read from the CD all I get are errors. I have to CD writers in my computer, and the boot diskette finds both, but won't move forward with the installation from floppy.

My next step is to copy the ISO to a Win32 partition (don't know how I'm going to make that on a pre-loaded and configured XP HDD), then copy the hd.img file to the floppy and hopefully install from the HDD.

Can someone walk me through the step-by-step boot-to-install from floppy procedure? Hopefully this is enough info to help.

Thanks in advance,
Duke

I don't have a solution for you, but wouldn't it be easier to focus on the cd booting problem? What youre trying to do sounds difficult.

Does your pc not boot any CD's or just the mandrake one - if it's only mandrake maybe you didn't create the CD properly?

go in your bios and set your cdrom to boot first.

I think FlyingSmurf is correct. Thanks Louis-Charles, but I did that already, and the CD won't boot. It think I copied the ISO image wrong... I used WINRAR, which extracted the files contained in the ISO to the CD. If I understand ISO correctly, it's a straight copy of binary data, so I've (since posting) been looking for a decent ISO CD-Burning utility. I'm hoping that IF I can make the CD bootable, I can go that route. Damn, this is a pain, but I'm thinking the end result will be worth it :-)

Duke

Damn, that's not it. Now I have a CD with an ISO file on it. Is there a trick to putting an image on a CD?

uhm, depends on easy, for me slack is easy install, step by step menu with no clutter. gui installs (redhat, mandrake, suse) have a a lot of clutter, do not always work, have to much to do that isn't necessary.

Hello.

I think your problem is indeed with the CD burning process you're using. When you had tried the Linux CD, neither CD nor floppy boot would work, indicating a burning problem.

Several CD burning programs out there have a "Burn Image" feature that you can use to burn an ISO to a CD, bootable and all. Simply burning the ISO file to the CD will not properly expand the ISO's contents to the disc.

Personally, I use Nero for burning. I've burnt several ISO's without a problem. There are many other programs, including Easy CD Creator, NCD, etc.

Hope that helps!

-Open Easy cd creator
-On the File menu
-Choose Record Cd from image in the File menu
-In the open dialog, select the type ".iso" for cd image and choose your mandrake iso
-burn it

here you go.

Please send me a message if it works or dont works at lcdumais@hotmail.com

thank you,
Louis-Charles Dumais

QT - I was using a bunch of other programs, but I did finally end up using Nero Burning ROM. Once I read this: http://www.my-opensource.org/lists/m.../msg00056.html I realized that I was selecting the wrong file format to burn over. Once I selected the filetype (*.* All Files) it worked like a charm.

LCD - Thanks to you too. E-mail on the way.

I made the bootable CD after 3 hours of effort lmao - so never actually got around to the installation. That'll happen tonight once I read up on partition sizes, formats, installation packages, etc.

Duke

IF you burned it with the windows XP program i'ts normal.You should burn it with NERO BURNING ROM

I burned my mandrake CD's from winXP using this tool

http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com/isorecorder.htm

It's small, free, and simple. Once you've installed it open the file browser, right click the file, and choose 'copy to cd image' (or something like that)

You're not supposed to burn the actual ISO onto the CD. If you've created the CD properly WinXP will actually auto-run a splash screen when you insert the newly burned CD.

Thanks y'all. My problem was lack of knowledge of how to burn ISO images to a CD... nothing wrong with Mandrake or Windows. My solution ended up being Nero Burning ROM, but I do appreciate the suggestions. I'll report back via separate thread if I have any problems with the installation of 9.1 when I get home.