So, just tonight I downloaded the Fedora 9 Live CD to try fedora out, especially since its the newest version. I found out though, that it won't boot on either my computer, or my family's computer. At first, I burnt one, but thought it took too short of time, so I tried that, it didn't work. Then again, I tried burning it a different way, and I thought it took about the time it should, but it won't work either. I've been booting from the CD drives on both of them, and a Knoppix live CD has worked for me before? Should I just try a different computer to burn the image onto the drive, or what would you suggest?

This may be a silly question, but here goes (don't be offended)...Are you sure that you downloaded an .iso version and then "burn an image" of it? I have made that mistake of downloading and trying to burn the wrong thing...I told you it was a silly question...

yeah, I know it was an .iso and it was burned correctly. Actually, the time before when I got a knoppix live CD, I accidentally did just burn the .iso as a file, not as it should have been burnt on the disc.

I'm just hoping that the i686 archetechure just means that it was meant for booting from a CD... because there wasn't an i386 one...

Here's where I got it from- http://fedoraproject.org/get-fedora.html also, that was the live CD bittorrent one..

i686 architecture means that it will run on a Intel Pentium 2 (AMD K6) class processor or better. 586 was Pentium and Pentium Pro processors. Will it boot at all? (ie does it goto a screen that will allow you to check the disk or chose to boot the Live CD?) if not get the MD5 or SA1 Check Sum the sa1 is
and verify it in windows using a sa1 checksum creator (do this with the ISO on your PC not the disk)

I did a search for i686 and came up with this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I686

I don't know much about bit torrents but possibly you just have a corrupt copy of the .iso. You may want to try and download it again a burn a new image.

It goes to an almost blank screen, with a _ flashing in the top left hand corner, and then doesn't work. It says error, press F1 to retry, F2 for setup. I've set it to only boot from the CD ROM, once. Its probably something with the disc. I thought bittorrent checked the hashes anyways.

I might try burning it from a different computer too. I actually downloaded it from my own computer, but because it doesn't have a burner, I stuck it on a 1gb flashdrive, stuck it into the other computer, copied it to that computer's hard drive, and then burnt the CD from that.

Also, you got a link for how to use that sa1 checksum thing? Or whatever? I've never heard of that kind of thing before.

http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnupg-ann...4q4/000184.html has a sha1sum generator for windows. just save to your desktop, open the command prompt (run->cmd) and then change the directory to where you saved it and then type "sha1sum.exe filename"

Validating ISO's:
http://docs.fedoraproject.org/readme-burni...ting-files.html

all right, since I didn't want to mess around with revalidating it, when bitorrent should have done that, I decided to redo the copy on to the flash drive, and then I burnt it from my parent's labtop. It worked... of course now I'm having trouble with partitioning my drive and installing it onto the partition. I thought a did a good job of clearing it off, and partitions. My main problem is that it copies whatever to the disc, and then freezes. I downloaded the full DVD .iso via bittorent today, but my mom took the labtop, and it won't be back until tuesday(or at least when i can use it then)... and I work tuesday night, so I'm not going to get much of a chance to use it.

I think I'll try once more, but this time let it do whatever it wants with partitions... although I don't want to completely kill my XP installation. I thought I was going to have to reinstall it...

My install routine for dual boot:
Boot into Windows, run Disk Cleanup then Defrag.
Download Gparted: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/
Create the Gparted LiveCD, reboot.
Use Gparted to resize the Windows partition. (if C: is 80G i usually half it)
Create 3 new partitions: /=ext3 10-15 G should be fine, swap 1G is good here, and /home remaining space.
Now when you remove the Gparted CD and reboot with the Linux CD the installer will see the new partitions
and offer to use them.
I have had both good and bad experiences with partitioning tools from the Linux
installation and have found this way to be more reliable.
Also i would recommend looking at PClinuxOS: http://www.pclinuxos.com/
I never could get into RedHat/Fedora as a desktop.

ah, well I got it installed, I'm just running into lots of bugs. I finally just took it gave a different partition choice. It worked, but now I can't seem to get my wireless card to work in it... I think its a bug, which annoys me. Head to the main Linux section if you want to check it out. This could be closed...

Oh, by the way, I've only got a 40gb hard drive, and I'm only trying it out really... I'm not going for a major switch yet.