[justinal]

Ok im trying to install mandrake on my computer. Im doing a clean install of it so the mandrake screen comes up you know enter to install and f1 for more options well i hit enter then it says accessing cd rom well then it checks for usb devices and then it goes cant access installation disc in your cd rom drive samsung cd-rom sc-140? please someone please help me im a newbie and i have no clue what to do

[lynch]

Where did you get the installation CDs? If downloaded,did you check the md5sums to verify the .iso images were good before being burned to a CD?
The CD drive should be okay.
HTH
lynch

[justinal]

im sorry im an idiot what does all that mean

[codejockey]

im sorry im an idiot what does all that mean

No, you're not an idiot -- and none of us were born knowing this stuff. Linux takes a lot of getting used to, so it isn't surprising that things are confusing at first. But to answer your questions ...

If downloaded,did you check the md5sums to verify the .iso images were good before being burned to a CD?

Lynch was asking you to verify that the .iso images you (may have) downloaded were transferred correctly to your system. In Linux, one way to do this (and currently the most rigorous) is to use a checksum; you compute a checksum on the file you downloaded and compare it with the published checksum for the file on the download site. If they match, then your download was error-free; if they don't, your download has at least one error, and you should re-download the file (and run the checksum comparison until the checksums match). As you can imagine, any error(s) in the .iso file you download can produce significant problems when you burn that file to a CD and later try to use the CD.

The term "md5sum" refers to the algorithm used to calculate the checksum for a file; currently, the md5sum algorithm is the most widely used of the checksum algorithms available.

Hope this helps -- additional info appreciated.