OS installation restarts

[Edward]

James Wilkinson wrote:

> Oais Halim wrote:
> 
>>I have a new cdrom drive so a possibility for it to fail is rare.
> 
> 
> Actually, computer electronics tends to follow a "bathtub curve"
> failure rate: there's a lot of failures in the first week or so,
> hardly any for a long time, then gradually they'll wear out.
> 
> It's also very possible that your CD drive is marginal. They're very
> generic these days: the only way for a manufacturer to distinguish
> its drives is to cut costs as far as possible. Often, they'll
> compromise quality at the same time.
> 
> Can you try doing the media check on someone else's PC?

Have you also tried to turn off the CD-ROM DMA during installation? I 
think the option is cdnodma but I'm not 100% sure.

That one's bitten me quite a few times on VIA hardware, but I guess it 
could apply to any chipset.

Quite often the IDE controller doesn't quite like the CD-ROM in DMA 
mode. It also isn't the first time I've seen CD-ROMs do weird stuff 
while connected on the same cable as other devices. Another thing you 
might check.

Regards,
Ed.