hi!!!!
im at home, using mandrake 10 to post this message.
passing that parameters works fine, no more hangs, works really well.

nothing to say.. hope you can install it too.

i will try it!
First i will flash my bios to the newest version, i read that could solve the problem too, and then i don't need to mess around with commands.
Thanks for your help!

*update*
I have flash my mb's bios to rev 1009(Asus A7n8x-x) and am now posting from mandrake 10!
I did not use any commands.
Thanks alot for the help.

Hey guys

After my first reply I found out that the mandrake ISO I was using was a beta, or worse. Thinking that to be the problem, I recently downloaded the official 10.0 community release and tried. Same situation.

Then downloaded Conectiva 9 (brazilian distro), and it hanged too.

I tried again with my tried and true Mandrake 9.1 community: all ok.

I will try this approach given by antipop, the boot parms, to check if that's the culprit. I've heard of this problem before, the APIC support making the kernel shoot this "Spurious interrupt" error message, but it hasn't happened to me yet, at least not that verbosely.

And this is the last time in several moths that I will be installing different distros to this computer, I'm sick of this. If this last try doesn't work i'm going to stick with mandrake 9.1 for good. And the next mobo i'll buy will be VIA . . . period. With this one I have two NForce2 mobos and all they've given me is trouble . . .

hey did you try flashing your bios ?
I've been running mandrake 10 all day now and no crash o whatsoever! It runs perfectly now!

After trying what Anti suggested (boot parms "noapic" and "nolapic") I *think* it passed the test. It's installing right now. More in a few minutes . . .

It is an nforce2/mandrake issue and needs to be worked out. Mandrake club memberships cost more then outright buying XP Home, especially over a couple of years of use. Anyway, they need to fix this issue asap and for free. To ask them to turn off features of their system board in software is sad.

I had exactly the same problem with a new motherboard I stuck in my machine after my ECS with a sis chipset died: An ASUS A7N8X-X, with the nforce2 chipset. As soon as diskdrake tried formatting the machine was locked up solid. Anyone have a solution for this problem?

if you would have read a the whole thread you would have noticed i have the same motherboard. Now i al did was update the mobo's bios to reb 1009 (latest version at the moment).
That solved all my problems and mandrake now runs perfectly. So i suggest you do that too.

Well, it worked . . . I have a working mandrake 10 box.

Thank you very mucho AntiPop2003!

However, as Jimbo quite correctly pointed out, it sucks that I have to pass arcane params and do silly stunts just to have the thing to install. Even more so if you take into account that this isn't obscure, niche hardware, but plain stuff you buy at your local store and lots of other people have. That said, it's the first time I had such troubles to install a distro. Most probably it's a 2.6 kernel thing.

And BTW, I can't do as you said Beire, since my mobo maker (Biostar) hasn't published an update to the bios since I bought the thing, I have the latest version, and it's the one that came with it. No BIOS flash convenience for moi

At least I have the distro working . . .

nice!!!
i wonder if i have to pass that parameters every time i boot with linux, or only in the installer.
w/o the parameters, mandrake starts good, but i had 2 crashes: the first, trying to read a cd, and the second trying to play a DVD.
the last time i boot, i passed the parameters and didnt hang.
what do you think guys?
i must pass EVERYTIME that fking parameter??

maybe i will update my bios.. but im not sure..

Nope, the setup inserts the params in lilo.conf by default

That was the first thing i checked when the system started

Well, mine did at least . . . the lilo.conf option under the label "linux" is "append=noapic " plus some other parms more.

BTW, that "nolapic" switch is necessary too? Setup prog only included "noapic"

It has to do with a variety of motherboards. At count it affects 3 that I can recall. Two of them are the A7N8X boards and the other that I can recall is the Shuttle MN31N. In both cases the bios can be updated to resolve the problem or you can pass the parameters to turn off certain features. But what's most common is the fact that it is Mandrake that is locking, etc. When you use the RHFC distros (any of them) the problem doesn't exist on that same hardware without the bios updates or without passing those parameters to turn off certain featuers.

It is not necessarily a 2.6 kernel thing since RHFC2 uses 2.6.5-1.358 and it does not cause the same problem.

And fedora uses which kernel version?

My mobo is a Biostar M7NCG400

FC2 uses 2.6.5-1.358 kernel. Fedora Core 1 uses the 2.4 kernel.

Do any of these boards use the IGP or do all of the use the IGP version of the nforce2 chipset? I know the Shuttle MN31N uses the IGP and has 2 video outs.

Edit: I see the M7NCG400 board has an IGP.