[JasonSCSN]

Hello, this is my first post here, but Ive known about this place for awhile but have never had any questions that Ive needed serious help with till now.

Well this isnt the basic how to install Linux question. I can do that, but what my problem is, is that I can not get the media check test option to pass any of my disks.

I have tested Fedora Core 3 and 4, Redhat, and CentOS because they all use the same media checker. This could go into a different category possibly but it had to do with Linux so I chose this one.

Well I will tell you all my methods I have chose to find out the problem. I firstly burned them onto CD-RW's so I didnt waste CD-R's in case it didnt work. But CD-RW's didnt work, so I tried CD R's and they did not work. I have burned with two different burners, one in my laptop, and one on a desktop. I have burned with MagicISO and Nero, still failed. I have tried the media check on my laptop and 4 desktop PC's. Still failed. Of course I thought that the CD's may be corrupt but I have used multiple CD's different times. I have also downloaded those linux distros on a download manager and without incase the actual download was corrupt. Still no go. I swear to myself I have tried every method known to man, it just will not pass that media check.

And I know it is not a good idea to try installing if it says failed. And it is not hard to burn an ISO image so I know I am doing that right.

I have actually burned CentOS awhile ago and it worked and now it does not want to. I have tried out linux before but this time I would like to use it as a desktop, but its killing me to not beable to install it cuz it will not pass the media check.

Anyone have any possible solutions that I have not thought of? Thank you for your help.

[saikee]

I never checked mine after the first couple checks because I think it is a waste of time.

I think most of the media checks I have seen are optional and can be opted out so don't really know your problem..

[JasonSCSN]

Ok well actually I am going to still need help from anyone else that may have solutions because the reason why I check the media is because the first time it did not work, the RPM packages were sorrupt when I tried installing Linux. So I did the media check, and as I assumed it would fail. Anyone else know anything about this?

[lynch]

The media check can't be relied upon if it's on the same disk you're checking. Go here to learn how to verify your downloaded iso files with md5sums.
How fast are you burning your CDs? A slower burn speed may help.
lynch

[utanja]

Originally Posted by lynch

The media check can't be relied upon if it's on the same disk you're checking. Gohere to learn how to verify your downloaded iso files with md5sums.
How fast are you burning your CDs? A slower burn speed may help.
lynch

i agree with lynch and saikee....md5sum is the best way to verify integrity of a download...

also....what sources are you using to download from....are they reliable..?

[JasonSCSN]

Well they are deffinantly reliable sources. Downloaded from Linuxiso.org, and the fedora official site as well as the solaris official site.

Anyway like I mentioned before, the install failed because it said bad RPM packages or an error in them, so I assumed the media checker was correct. But anyway thanks for the advice, I will try out that with md5sums and see what happens.

But anyone else can still give me advice, if they think of anything else.

[saikee]

Try out a few distros. Modern ones are better in detecting harware.

Unbuntu, Suse and Mandriva are big names! I will be surprised if a user does like any of them.

[JasonSCSN]

I have tried many distros and have tried the modern ones like Fedora, Solaris, and CentOS. I did the md5sums check on one file and it came with no errors. I will try others and see what happens. However I have never tried Ubuntu, or SUSE I will give them a shot.

Also I didnt answer someone elses question, when I burn with CD RW, its normally only 4X cuz they burn slower. But when I burn with CD R it is normally 32 X I believe.

[sammysosa]

From the problems you've described, I think you should try a different distribution, along with a different CD / DVD .ISO file burning app (both of which are freeware). You'll save yourself from those 650+MB downloads, only to find out after a LOT of wasted time that you have a problem with the download, or with the burn.

Puppy Linux is only ~62MB in size, which means that on a broadband connection, you can download it in about 12 minutes (depending on how busy the ibiblio servers are). A full 650MB .ISO would take at LEAST two hours at the same speed. If you follow these instructions, you could have a working "LIVE" CD ready to bootup within about 5 minutes after the download finishes. Then, if you decide you want to keep using Puppy for a while, you have a choice of downloading other versions of Puppy (with more apps embedded), or creating your own custom version of Puppy with whichever programs you want to include on the CD-R.

First, download the LIVE version of Puppy Linux as an .ISO file from here:

http://www.goosee.com/puppy/download/downpage.htm

You then download the BurnCDCC program, which is VERY small (< 200KB), and can ONLY be used to burn .ISO files to CDs and DVDs; you can get it here:

http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/burncdcc.zip

Next, you use BurnCDCC to burn the Puppy Linux .ISO file to a CD-R. Just extract the executable and .TXT files, then double-click the .EXE file, and follow the instructions in README.TXT to burn the Puppy Linux .ISO file to a CD-R.

Next, boot the defective system with the Puppy Linux CD; just tell it which keyboard you use (mine is US-qwerty), which type of mouse you're using (USB or PS/2), and whether or not the mouse has a scroll-wheel.

When you see the Puppy Linux desktop, choose the proper screen resolution for your display, and you'll be running a "live" CD version of Puppy Linux without a lot of aggravation and heartburn.

Best of all, Puppy Linux is designed so you can remove the CD from the drive while Puppy is running, because it installs to a RAMDRIVE, which means that you DON'T need to keep the CD-R in the drive while Puppy is running; I'm not aware of any other Linux distribution which has THAT feature). That means you can use Puppy to burn recovered files to a CD-R (using the included burner software; Graveman is for burning CD-Rs, and TkDVD burns DVDs).

Of course, if your system has a DVD player or burner, you could even use Puppy to watch a DVD-movie while you test-drive the OS...

Hope this helps you; once I tried Puppy, I stopped looking for the "perfect" distro. You can try it out from the live CD, then download a version with more apps, or even create your own version of Puppy and install it onto a harddrive...

[saikee]

I wouldn't stretch Puppy too hard myself.

The version 1.0.6 still has a 2.4.29 Kernel which means it has no Sata support and can't install or mount partitions beyond the 137Gb barrier.

It is a very capable distro especially bearing in mind its installed footprint of 0.5Gb. It has certanly improved on considerably in the recent releases.

However big distros from large organisations, with a large core team in development and years well established documentations and pacakages repositories are the ones to fall back on eventually for the heavy computing work.