Linux Problem installing Linux

krishnandu

krishnandu

Skilled
Hi friends, No matter whichever distro I want to try to install doesn't get installed saying "The cd/dvd media may be corrupted...."(I don't remember the exact words) in the middle of installation.

I've succesfully installed and used many distros before in dual boot. But due to some virus problem I had to format my whole HDD. Now I've installed Win 7 and want to have Linux in dual boot. As I love linux and want to learn linux, I always prefer to have it installed in dual boot.

I tried Fedora 12 32bit and 64bit both, OpenSUSE 11.2 and Linux Mint 8. All the three distros give same problem saying something like "The CD/DVD media may be scratched etc etc."

Well......The media may be the problem in one case, but how is it same in all the cases??

Currently I'm downloading Mandriva, I'm sure that'll also give same problem.

Well the measures I've already taken are:

1. I thought the CD/DVD drive itself may be the problem. But the Data DVD's/CD's or Audio/MP3 CD's/DVD's I'm burning are working fine. Any dvd/cd is working fine. Even I installed Win 7 through this drive. So drive cannot be the problem.

2. I thought media that I use may be the problem(1st time). But now I dont think media may be the problem. Because it's getting repeated with any media.

I know there are live cd's but please don't recommend those, as I will install applications and work in linux as I do in windows, so live cd wont help me.

Please suggest what to do.

I'm attatching a snapshot of my partition system, to help you understand easily what I want to do.



The 1st Partition of 100MB was itself created by Win 7 for some repair purpose.

The 2nd partition is where I've my Win 7 installed.

The 3rd partition is simply for keeping data, movies, music etc

And the free space of 30GB is where I want to install Linux.

Please help guys. What should I do??

The measures I've already taken are:

1. I thought the CD/DVD Drive may be the faulty. But any other discs I've burned/burning are working correctly. So the burner can't be the faulty.

2. I thought the media may be faulty(1st time). But after seeing this repeated with any media I'm sure the media is not faulty.

3. I've already re-plugged the cables but no positive result. Win 7 is working perfectly. So the cables may not be loose.

4. Well......after taking into account all this measues I thought of may be the specific area of HDD may be faulty.

So I tried creating both primary and logical partition and checked it for error's and bad sector but the result is positive. No errors found.

I would have also tried the same medias to install in some other PC, but its a bit difficult to ask someone to let me install OS in other's PC. But I will try to borrow someone's HDD and will try the same media to install and will post it here in a day or so.

So what you guys suggest???
 
Hi krishnandu,
The data corruption can occur at two points:
1) While downloading from Internet
2) Writing ISOs to Blank Media

Now,
I would suggest you to
1) Verify integrity of iso you downloaded via MD5 or SHA1 checksums. every distribution distributes these along with ISOs. check the mirror for finding it. you can use MD5 Check 2.1. to avoid this headache, download linux over torrents. it never gets corrupted

2) While writing media, write is at slow speed like 8x to minimize possibility of errors. also you can use a USB pen drive to install linux, so you won't get data errors and install would be faster.

I'm attatching a snapshot of my partition system, to help you understand easily what I want to do.



The 1st Partition of 100MB was itself created by Win 7 for some repair purpose.

The 2nd partition is where I've my Win 7 installed.

The 3rd partition is simply for keeping data, movies, music etc

And the free space of 30GB is where I want to install Linux.
Please help guys. What should I do??
Click to expand...

from the free space,
1) create a partition twice as size of your ram, if you large amount of RAM(>1GB) and create it same size of your RAM. use it as SWAP
2) Create a root partition(/) of size 15GB and format it with ext3. use it as your root partition.
3) Create your home partition with rest and format it with ext3. mount it as /home
To proceed, Mandriva, kindly read the Documentation
Introducing Mandriva Linux

Let us know, if you face any further issues

PS: I like your dedication toward linux and the fact that you still didn't give up after facing lot of issues. good luck:hap2:
 
it could be the source/iso you downloaded may have been corrupted during download time...

as per sir gaurish instruction, do check for data integrity of the downloaded iso and lower the writing speed...also, verify the integrity of the disc you created to make sure that the disc is working properly...
 
U could try burning the ISO on blank media on ur friends computer to eleminate the possibility of cd/dvd drive problems.....and then use the CD/DVD for installation....

well, if all of the above stuff dosent work, then u could order Ubuntu Live CD(u can do a normal install using it) through their homepage ..it ships in abt 15 days....or borrow it from someone....
 
Look for the checksum integrity of your downloads, also how do you burn the disc? When you insert the disc in a Windows session, what do you see? Depending on how you burn, it is possible that the image file itself is burnt. Also, use MagicISO to burn and enable the "make bootable" option.
Also, there are a lot of smaller files, and it is quite possible that the problem could still be with the media itself. +1 for using the lowest possible burning speeds.
 
Thanks guys for all your suggestions. Well......I'm burning my DVD's at 8x speed. And I've downloaded all the distros over torrents.

@eventhorizon I know I can order Ubuntu Live CD online, infact I have it also. But I dont want to use Ubuntu.

As Gaurish and linuxtechie suggested, I would try to install them through USB. Thanks for the suggestion.

And as everyone suggested will check the integrity, and post it here the results.

Hi friends, I googled up about how to install linux through USB and found this one most interesting and easy UNetbootin - Homepage and Downloads

I followed the steps as provided there but while booting I'm getting "boot error".

Please help. For your reference I must add that I've tried it with Linux Mint 8 ISO.

Hi guys.......With the help of Install Linux Mint 8 to a Flash Drive in Windows | USB Pen Drive Linux I've successfully build a bootable Linux Mint USB. But the problem is it's asking for username and password which I never saw in the Live CD. I tried googling it out but no result. I've also tried common possible combination like root, mint, live, user, username, password, passwd and even blank password but none worked. Can anyone please help me in this regard.

Hey friends, I again tried unetbootin and this time successfully created liveUSB and even able to boot from that. But the result is same, I'm getting Error 5[Input/Output error] i.e. the same error I faced previously while installing it through CD while installing through USB.

What should I do??

Though I've tried only one distro(Linux Mint 8) using liveUSB. I'll also try Fedora or other distro's and report here.
 
Here's easiest way to what you do, DO NO overwrite windows 7/vista boot loader. Install linux from live cd, when it asks for grub setup, either skip it totally or make it write boot sector to first sector of your linux partition and not MBR, this will not affect windows 7 in anyway. After that use EasyBCD in windows 7 ( Download EasyBCD 1.7.2 - NeoSmart Technologies ) and install neogrub which will boot from within windows 7 boot loader ..
 
does this neogrub stuff support latest grub2 ? i doubt it since grub2 is highly volatile - lots of stuff going in to it...
 
@Gaurish Ya I tried that

@rapt0r The problem is not that. I tried installing from Live CD and even the DVD but the problem is I get the Error 5 [Input/Output Error] saying something like "The media is corrupted...."(I dont remember the actual words) in the middle of installation.

I've tried probably 3-4 distros, each giving same problem.

I don't find any cause for this problem. The media may be corrupted in case of one but how can it be for all the medias. And as the members suggested here after my 1st post I tried creating LiveUSB and installing from it. I'm getting the same error. Even if I think of the ISO file itself is corrupted how can it be for all the ISO's of diff distro's. I've downloaded them using utorrent not even direct download/ftp download.
 
Your issue is really weird and I don't have much idea why its behaving like that. I suspect it has something to do with your hardware config, because it runs perfectly on my PC and countless other machines I have installed on.maybe you are one of few unlucky souls who has badly supported hardware:p

Hence, I would appreciate if you can list out your hardware config.

krishnandu said:
@Gaurish Ya I tried that

@rapt0r The problem is not that. I tried installing from Live CD and even the DVD but the problem is I get the Error 5 [Input/Output Error] saying something like "The media is corrupted...."(I dont remember the actual words) in the middle of installation.

I've tried probably 3-4 distros, each giving same problem.

I don't find any cause for this problem. The media may be corrupted in case of one but how can it be for all the medias. And as the members suggested here after my 1st post I tried creating LiveUSB and installing from it. I'm getting the same error. Even if I think of the ISO file itself is corrupted how can it be for all the ISO's of diff distro's. I've downloaded them using utorrent not even direct download/ftp download.
Click to expand...

File Corruption with Bittorrent is very rare as it has inbuilt harsh checking. I advise to stop distro hopping and select one distro. if you get any errors installing that, post the exact error here. it would help isolate the issue

Link:

Common Problems Booting from a CD
 
@krishna: did you try searching google first? i did a search and one interesting link mentioned its usually bad hard disk/dvd connection or disk itself is giving errors.

another interesting point mentioned was that your RAM may be bad. have you run memtest recently? if you have multiple modules of RAM try removing one at a time (run only one module at a time) then see what happens?
 
why are you still going for dual boot? using virtual pc or vmware, you can avoid writing dvds, finding drivers etc...

you can even have multiple linux distros at the same time... with vmware, you dont even need to install linux. just download a vmware appliance from the vmware site.

i1fcy0.jpg
 
I would go for vmware too if it weren't for lack of desktop effects and 3D perf in general :D... I've had not success with VirtualBox claimed 3d and vmware open source project called "vmgl"...

But for general use, yes both VMware Server and VirtualBox (both free) are excellent options...
 
@Gaurish Yes the problem is really wired. I don't think hardware support has any issue here. Because as I said I installed and used Linux many times before formatting, last in triple boot with XP, Win 7 and Fedora. Previously I've installed Ubuntu, Linux Mint, OpenSUSE, Fedora number of times successfully and used it. So hardware support cudn't be any issue here. I formatted whole HDD due to some virus problems and installed Win 7 successfully and while installing linux I'm facing this problems now. As you said the file corruption may happen with bittorrent, but how this is same for all the ISO's??

As you asked my system configuration is

Intel Pentium D @ 3.0GHz

Intel D945GCCR

Transcend 667MHz 2x1GB DDR2 RAM

XFX NVIDIA 9500GT 1GB DDR2

WD 160GB

@vishalrao The connection to HDD and DVD ROM can't be bad as I'm using Win 7 without any problem and can access and burn any DVD's with any problem. Though I've also tried unplugiing and relugging the cables. But no result. Thanks for testing RAM suggestion. I'll test each module one by one today and report it here.

@booo I know there is Virtual Box, VMWare etc. But still I'd prefer dual boot. Because If I ever corrupt my Win 7, I'll also loose those data in Linux. And if I've dual boot I can repair my installation, can backup my data if I corrupt win 7 through linux, which I've done several times using XP. I dont trust stability of Windows. And I don't want to loose my data for just a OS crash/Virus problems.
 
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