I'm not exactly a newbie when it comes to Linux, but I'm having some problems installing Mandriva 2007 on my machine. When I put the CD in and restart, it boots to the CD just fine, but when I go to install the OS, it tells me it can't find a Mandriva 2007 install disc in the specified drive. All of my ribbons are plugged in securely, and I ran Mandrake 10 on a box with this same CD drive and DVD drive and they worked fine, so I'm not thinking compatibility issues. What can my problem be? Any suggestions?

Have you tried passing different kernel options at the boot prompt? Does Mandriva perhaps even give you a list of different kernels to boot, v2.4, SCSI etc? Perhaps altering a BIOS setting regarding the IDE channels may help? Turn off "auto" and try different manual settings. Have you tried from both the CD and DVD? Maybe dropping to a shell during install and mounting the disc by hand?

The Mandriva boot screen that I'm seeing has a list of boot options for the install, but most of them have to do with video capabilities, ie. VGA or text. I have tried both the CD and DVD. I haven't seen a place to go to a shell during the install...infact, I haven't seen the install at all, because it wont come up. I'll look in the BIOS, but somehow I'm not feeling that that's the problem.

Did you check md5's? Might need a switch at boot because of the brand of cd drive. Some CD drives are real goofy. Seems Knoppix used something like no ata or other switch to correct for drive. There some issues with burned cd's on real old drives. Try different brand. I read it wrong and answer it wrong too. So get off my case you goober.

The drive is neither new nor old, really, but it is an HP. The DVD drive is an NEC. The loader recognizes both of them but wont read a disk from it after it boots. And the MD5's all checked out before I burned them. This is driving me nuts. Massive headache.