I seem to have a somewhat different Mandrake 10 installation failure than others here, who report freezes during the initial boot off the CD.
My disc 1 boots fine, and I am allowed to plod all the way through partition setup and package selection. Installation of packages then begins fine, and the various splash screens appear. But when installation reaches a point where some 20 to 15 minutes remain, the process freezes. It's a hard freeze: I can't even eject the CD, but must hit the reset button on the box.
As Linux always screws up partition tables, I thought perhaps this might be the cause. But I have tried twice: first by using Mandrake to partition unallocated HDD space, and the second time (after again repairing the destroyed table) by first using Partition Magic in Windows to create ext2 boot and root partitions, as well as Linux swap. (In both cases, I attempted to install Mandrake entirely on logical partitions.)
Fedora Core 2 installs fine on this system. Is there something other than alleged badly burned ISOs at work here? I've burned dozens of ISOs on this burner, including Windows and Fedora OS CDs, with nary a hitch in any of 'em, so it seems unlikely that I'd happen to burn a bad Mandrake CD, particularly given so many reported Mandrake install freezes - unless there's something inherently crappy in the Mandrake ISOs themselves, requiring kid-glove treatment.
Again, assume it isn't the way the CD was burned. What else could it be?
NF7-S v2
XP2800 Barton 200x10.5
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Maxtor DM 40gig via PATA-SATA adapter
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Cable broadband (no router - yet)