Linux Gurus, I need a little help installing

[lsvtec]

The installer seems to start okay, it detects the proper hardware but as soon as it goes to give me my first set of options after the install starts I get this:

error in exec of stage2 :-(
trying to execute '/usr/bin/runinstall2' from the installation volume,
the following fatal arror occurred
FATAL ERROR IN STAGE1: Exec format error

I can't recover from this.
You may rebbot your system.


a google search revealed that many others are seeing the same error (mostly with a ramdisk) but I found no solutions. Any ideas?

This is on a Pentium MMX 200 mHz (I know that is not much machine, but Win2K ran fine on it so command line Linux should be fast).

Win2K still boots okay.

 

[B16]

do you have a blank partition you're installing onto?

 

[lsvtec]

Going to be formatting the drive, it is not currently blank, no. But it will be. As long as the Mandrake installer hasn't changed much in the last year it should still give me the opportunity to format the disk. It crashes before that.

 

[B16]

hmm... i would try giving it its own partition. but wait to see if you get any other answers before you go and do that

 

[phunky.buddha]

Sorry man... it's been too long.

 

[posol]

are you sure the iso you got is legit? did you verify the md5 checksum?
linuxiso.org is a great spot if you haven't been there yet.

also, sometimes, if you NAME the cd when burning it different than the name (everything before .ISO in the DL package) it tends to throw errors.