Mandrake 8.1 install question

[Goon]

Hi everyone I'm new to the board and Linux and hoping to move towards Linux o/s. However, when I begin the load I come to the prompt to install o.k. after that I get:"Could not uncompress second stage ram disk.This is probably an hardware error while reading the data. This may be caused by hardware failure or Linux kernel bug." I'm trying to install on an older machine with a Windoze 2K o/s? I dont know what to do next any help would be appreciated.
Thanks

[pkd_lives]

Well first off I would suggest a visit to this site. Pay particular attention to the installatin notes. It may or may not help. Your specific error does not appear, so it may be a hardware incompatabilty. Would need more on the specs to analyse that. Check your hardware at Mandrake and see what they say.

Mandrake 8.1 errata

Next I would say, did you buy copies or is it a download, if it is a download you may have corrupted data on the CDs.

Thirdly I would suggest that if you can you should head for a later version of the software, 8.2 is very stable, and 9.0 is the latest (and therby having the best hardware support).

[TheGreatPoo]

I had the same problem and it turned out to be the disks (which I downloaded).  Buying the 8.1 Box set solved the problem.