Trying to install from the CD ROM , I get an error before the install process begins:

"Error - Could not uncompress second stage ramdisk. This is probably an hardware error while reading the data. (this may be caused by a hardware failure or a linux kernel bug)"

At that point you have to select OK. Then the message comes up:

"error in exec of stage2 :-(
trying to execute '/usr/bin/runintsall2' from the installation volume, the following fatal error occured
FATAL ERROR IN STAGE1: I/O error
I can't recover from this
You may reboot your system"

Sounds like my download of Mandrake is bad. Would anyone agree or disagree with that?
Thanks.

Hi,

I got the exact same problem! Indeed, your CDs (at least the first one) is most probably bad. I would recommend to download the 3 ISOs from an "official" Mandrake' link mirror (i.e. any of the ones you can find in the Mandrake's download page). Then, do a MD5SUM check to make sure they are OK. Finally, burn the ISOs on CD-Rs and everything should be OK. That is what I did and it is OK now. Please note that you could only download the first one and try again. If it fails on the second one, like for me, then you know what to do.

Thanks. How do I do a MD5SUM check to make sure they are OK?

Hi,

Try this link

http://www.md5summer.org

to get a Windows version of MD5SUM.

In Linux, the command already exist...

Basically, you just run the command "md5sum <iso filename>" for each ISO you are downloading. The result should match the md5sum result provided for each of the ISOs and listed on Mandrake's web site.

In case you re-download the iso's and it doesn't help, I have also had similar errors with failing cdrom drives and some motherboards.

I just tried to upgrade from 8.1 to 9.2 & I got a catastrophic error just after the screen shows "stage 2 install..." & ..."probing serial port..." Any ideas? 8.1 reinstalls fine...