(first im a newbie as well but had same problems with mandrake)
all right this seems to be happening to alot of people
 
1st did you download it or buy it i know you said yout tried from a network but just wondering if you moved it from a downloaded iso
 
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/thread.php?id=27167 on this thread at the end there was some issues with installing mandrake
 
my best guess is that it was not made right it shouldnt be your computer, but real quick you trying to install mandrake on one hard drive xp on the other because i think the mbr has to be on one drive
 
heres some things that you should try i know it helped smooth the install for me
 
first defrag the drive
second get rid of tmp prefetch files i used these two free apps
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4191
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download.php?det=4122
run scandisk, chkdsk checking for errors
that should help
next is did you try a straight boot essentialy not let xp be involved
 
i know at one time i had to use the autostart with mandrake in which when i inserted the cd i clicked install and that helped me get somewhere
 
and you said 26 minutes i got my install down to 7 minutes and seems your pc is faster than mine
 
this aint the best information or help but its a start
 
im sure someone can give more information
 

Ok, the first thing I tried is to install from iso's that i downloaded. Then I tried a network install ie install dirrectly from the ftp site(that's why i said 26min, the install took over 2hr).
 
As far as the mbr goes it is on the hd with xp, but i don't think that would be a problem.
 
I'm gonna go through the links you posted. Thankx

like i said not the best info
 
but none the less may help
sure someone could give better info
 
just realized also what speed did you burn at you should burn at the lowest possible on your burner like 4x or so

On another post, a user is seeing random freeze problems with this board. See;
 
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/thread564-1.html
 
I am going to guess that it is a hardware issue. I wonder about the sata drives. Anyone have experience with these drives?
 
Mandrake 10 is supposed to have support for the drives, but I wonder.
 
How did you format your partitions? Did you use the Mandrake partitioning tool or another, such as PartitionMagic?
 
In terms of the install freeze issues, often..take your guess...it is due to incompatible hardware or a bad burn of the cd's. You got to burn the cd's at 4X or 8X speed. Iso files are fussy. Do not burn them at the top speed of your cdrw drive.
 
 

I am going to try reburning the cd's...after I download them again.
I am installing on a new hd, and used the mandrake utitity to format the drive (auto allocate).
From what I have seen some people had some difficulty installing and some didn't(nforce 2). The interesting thing is that i tried an expert install and could not find the right sata driver (a name that resembles silicone image SiI3112 anyways). I excluded the possibility of a bad burn (I used CDRWin) because I tried a network install and it still froze.

That's what I was wondering. You are still installing to a hard drive, so if the drive is not writing correctly, you experience the freeze problem.

I had the same problem with my Mandrake 10 CE Install. As it turns out, the partitioning tool in "Mandrake is Flakey at Best" There words, not mine. Anyway, I split my hard drive with Partition magic and left the new partition unformatted. When the install question came up I chose to use unallocated space and had no problems with installation whatsoever, accept my video card, which was solved here in the forum.

I'm simply not understanding why so many are having so many problems with Mdk 10. I downloaded the ISOs for the three CDs of Mandrake Community and burned then with K3B at 8x, and have had no problems whatsoever. In fact, I've used these "Community" CDs for three different installs and have never had even the first problem! Go figure..

from what i understand (considering this is basically my first linux install) there might an issue with nforce2 (nf7-s for me) or/and the SATA controller(siI3112). The reason i am saying this (aside from reading a couple of confusing posts on this) is that i managed to install 10CE but on a regular ide hd(same machine).
 
given my previous setup, (2 sata drives), i have read (not sure where) that fixing the install freezes might be as simple as switching the two sata drives(sata1 in slot2 sata2 in slot1).
 
Like i said, linux installed on my ide drive, but now i can't boot to xp(sata drive) even tho lilo configuration seems ok. i get a black screen with a blinking underscore...maybe ide has priority over sata and the mbr is read of the ide drive?? I have a windows option that seems to point to the right device and i can see the sata hd from linux.
I'll get back as soon as i figure something out...i really dont wanna do a fixmbr

I have the same freezing problems and i have a IDE hard drive and a NForce 2 mobo (A7N8X-X) i think that might be NForce chipset since i got a IDE HD and it freeze.

I think you are all correct, we have a few issues here. There have been a number of prior posts with the A7N8X-X board. As I see it we have;
 
1. Mandrake CE's partitoning utility mangles the partitions, as evidenced by my problem in a non-sata/nForce install. partitioMagic could not read the drive until I used it to delete the Mandrake Partition and re-format the partition, then do the install of Mandrake again. Mandrake booted fine with grub, but PartitionMagic saw the drive as "bad."
 
2. Sata drives were not supported in previous versions of Mandrake and apparently there are still some issues with some of these drives...or
 
3. The nForce chipset issue.
 
I will try an install on my nForce board this weekend (it has a non-sata drive), using PartitionMagic to format the partition.
 
Interestingly, my prior install of Mandrake 10 beta went fine on the nForce system. Something has changed.