Re: (Newbie) Media Check Failed

[ABrady <xunil kc rr com>]

On Thu, 19 Jun 2003 12:15:37 +0100
"Lyndon Eaton" <lyndon eaton premierpc co uk> wrote:

> This is my first time downloading and installing Linux, so appologise
> for my lack of knowledge! I do intend to buy books, but so far not
> managed to get over the first hurdle.
> 
> I have downloaded Red Hat 9, and the MD5 checks on all three iso
> images are correct. I have burnt these images to CDs using a PC
> running Windows 2000, Roxio Easy CD Creator v5 Platinum, on an IDE
> Plextor 8/4/32 writer at x8. Disks 1 & 2 fail the Media Check, disk 3
> passes. However all disks are readable as I had booted from disk 1.
> 
> I have read a number of past posts in the archives and there does not
> seem to be a definative fix. Most suggestions are also related to
> Linux CD writing software.
> 
> One suggestion was bad memory? I have reduntant sticks that I could
> try, but disk 3 passed the media check? And all three CDs were burnt
> in the same way from the same machine?
> 
> Many thanks!
> Lyndon Eaton.

The standard response is usually to make sure to use 700MB discs of a
decent quality.

I personally have been successful using 650MB CDs and/or burning at 2X.
But I've had a couple of failures doing that. I've also had failures on
700MB discs at 2X and other speeds, too. I use only cheap discs and most
of my burns turn out fine at slow speeds.

As an alternative, if you have the room on  the hard drive and/or can
add in a separate hard drive to create the space needed, placing the
ISOs on disk and installing from that is a good method. I did it once
just to try it and it worked great

Another method is FTP. But you really need a fast mirror to do that, and
it's best if you have it all located on a machine you have networked in
nearby.

There really are too many problems with this. I'm not sure why that is.
I've even heard of a couple of problems with copies bought in stores
doing similar things. One of those was the copy for sure because a
different copy worked just fine.

None of that takes away the possibility of it being bad RAM. Even though
the third disc passes, that doesn't mean the RAM isn't marginal or
flaky. I even know of a few instances where all passed the mediacheck
and failed during install and the problem turned out to be RAM-related.

-- 
If it was easy, you probably did it wrong.