So I’ve been trying out several different linux distros for the past month on a old computer of mine. I tried openSUSE, Ubuntu, and Mint. I liked all of them but decided i wanted to use openSUSE for my new computer i just built. Well when i try installing openSUSE it always gives me some error about checksum not matching checksum on disk. I can choose to ignore it but eventually a box just comes up and says INSTALLATION FAILURE. I tried Ubuntu and Mint and neither one of them will work either. They give me messages saying that my disk, disk drive, or hard drive is bad. I’ve reburned all the distros at the lowest speed, used a different dvd drive, and a different hard drive. None of these things made any difference. So does anyone have any ideas what could be the problem? Could it be my motherboard? Everything I bought is brand new.
my system is:
-ASUS M4N68T-M Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
-AMD Athlon II 3.0ghz dual core
-Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3500418AS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive
-G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-8500CL7D-2GBNQ
When an md5sum-check tells you that the image is faulty, the image is most probably faulty… However, this can be due to several reasons, for example the original image having errors. Also your burning-drive could be malfunctioning and therefore only creates bad images.
As long as this message appears, even ignoring them won’t help you.
If all the distro DVDs won’t work, it’s possible you have a faulty DVD drive. Or it could be that your downloads are corrupted, or your burns are bad. You won’t get any thing good if you try to bypass media checking so you have to fix the problem. Work through the problem in this order:
- Verify the ISO images using md5sum as explained by the distro’s instructions.
- Verify the burn by reading back the DVD and comparing with the ISO image. Most image burning programs have some option to do this.
- Verify the image using the self-check facility of the installer.
No use proceeding to the next stage until you clear the current one.
My 2 cents worth:
I tried Ubuntu and Mint and neither one of them will work either. They give me messages saying that my disk, disk drive, or hard drive is bad. I’ve reburned all the distros at the lowest speed, used a different dvd drive, and a different hard drive. None of these things made any difference. So does anyone have any ideas what could be the problem?
Well if it isn’t the DVD RW drive it could be the media. I suspect that even unused DVD/CD R and RW blanks degrade over time. Try buying a completely new packet of blanks today and try again.
HTH
Alright I redownloaded the openSUSE 11.2 dvd and verified the checksum. It matches perfect(295d713314a30ad017948f0d542c6d92 openSUSE-11.2-DVD-i586.iso). I tried installing again and got the same checksum message right away. I dled and burned this dvd using my buddies computer which I know works just fine. Also my dvds are brand new also, I’m sure its not them. Before this new computer all of my distro cds/dvds installed just fine on my old computer, no errors at all and ran perfect. My roommate is actually running Ubuntu on his computer from the very same cd that would not work on my computer so that makes no sense to me. I’m really doubting that it is the install cds/dvds. Any other ideas? This is really frustrating 
i just want to use my new computer!!
…or not be able to read them properly.
Try running a memory check - memtest86 is the best out there for this.
It’s possible you’ve got a memory or bus problem that’s causing problems
- if the checksums are verifying and the disc self-test runs OK, that’s
the next suspect.
Jim
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
I threw a different dvd drive in there already (the one from my old computer that installed everything fine) and it gave me the same exact problems.
…in that case, hendersj hint is worth a closer look.
First of all thank you for the advice. I first tried windows memory diagnostic and it said I had 0 errors in memory. Then I downloaded memtest86 and I did the full test, it said there were 38 errors in test 7. The other 10 tests had 0 errors. So you think thats enough to safely say I have some bad memory? Maybe I’ll try one stick at a time and see if that makes a difference.
Memtest should return ZERO errors. Any error means corruption.
Yep, you should test the RAM-bars one by one. Leave only RAM that passes the tests completely. The good thing about all this: you now have a choice of distro media to install whichever distro you like.
Enjoy, and a warm welcome here.
Any error means corruption.
Esp. after such a short time - usually memtests should go several runs over some hours. Even a single error after six hours of memtesting means a corrupt RAM.
Fortunately RAM is still relatively cheap these days, so consider yourself lucky to have found the sources of your errors.
Well thanks very much to all of you. I really appreciate all the help, I’ve been going crazy trying to figure this out. I’ll have to return this ram and get some new stuff. I’ll be back if the new stuff is fine and i still have the same troubles. Lets hope it doesn’t come to that.
On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 06:56:01 +0000, BadBeatKing wrote:
> hendersj;2172314 Wrote:
>> Try running a memory check - memtest86 is the best out there for this.
>> It’s possible you’ve got a memory or bus problem that’s causing
>> problems
>> - if the checksums are verifying and the disc self-test runs OK, that’s
>> the next suspect.
>>
>> Jim
>> –
>> Jim Henderson
>> openSUSE Forums Administrator
>
> First of all thank you for the advice. I first tried windows memory
> diagnostic and it said I had 0 errors in memory. Then I downloaded
> memtest86 and I did the full test, it said there were 38 errors in test
> 7. The other 10 tests had 0 errors. So you think thats enough to safely
> say I have some bad memory? Maybe I’ll try one stick at a time and see
> if that makes a difference.
Yep, the Windows memcheck isn’t very thorough in my experience; Memtest86
really hammers the memory hard (it stresses it to find errors) and is
very reliable.
One stick at a time is a good way to see if it’s an individual stick
that’s the problem, but one thing to be aware of as well is that memory
errors can come from other sources - bus problems aren’t uncommon (and
hard to diagnose effectively), but also I’ve seen flaky/cheap power
supplies cause all sorts of random stuff to happen; a bad capacitor in a
PSU can cause all sorts of weird memory problems.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
…so i just tested both sticks of memory individually and there were no errors, so i’m not entirely convinced i have bad memory anymore. This takes me back to not knowing what the hell is wrong
On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:16:02 +0000, BadBeatKing wrote:
> …so i just tested both sticks of memory individually and there were no
> errors, so i’m not entirely convinced i have bad memory anymore. This
> takes me back to not knowing what the hell is wrong
It could be the second socket that’s part of the problem (ie, a bus
problem). If you switch the banks the memory is in and rerun the test,
does the address change or stay the same?
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:27:46 +0000, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 03 Jun 2010 17:16:02 +0000, BadBeatKing wrote:
>
>> …so i just tested both sticks of memory individually and there were
>> no errors, so i’m not entirely convinced i have bad memory anymore.
>> This takes me back to not knowing what the hell is wrong
>
> It could be the second socket that’s part of the problem (ie, a bus
> problem). If you switch the banks the memory is in and rerun the test,
> does the address change or stay the same?
>
> Jim
Also, make sure you run a full test with Memtest86 if you haven’t - it
seems like not enough time has passed since your last post for an
extended test on both sticks of memory, so it may just be that you’ve not
done a thorough enough test to find the problem.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Hi
And if you put both in you get errors?
Power Supply OK?
Are the memory sticks the same manufacturer, model specs etc? If they
are a matched pair are they in the correct sockets on the motherboard
for dual memory?
Can you adjust the memory voltage in the BIOS? You need to
check the memory specifications and ensure you have it correct!!!
Maybe a thorough check in the BIOS of all the voltage/clock settings
etc is in order.
–
Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 (x86_64) Kernel 2.6.27.45-0.1-default
up 2 days 18:52, 3 users, load average: 0.48, 1.01, 0.85
GPU GeForce 8600 GTS Silent - CUDA Driver Version: 195.36.15
hmm this is kind of interesting. So I checked both sticks of memory in slot 2 and they both came up with errors now. Neither came up with errors when I tested them in slot 1. (I only have 2 slots total for memory just fyi)Also i tried installing some distros (i tried ubuntu and mint) and they both installed fine with just one stick of memory in slot 1. So does this mean that my motherboard is garbage? also just letting anyone know that the memory is both the same brand and same exact type, they came together in a pack
-G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F3-8500CL7D-2GBNQ
So does this mean that my motherboard is garbage?
Hm, I’m afraid so… I have had the same bad luck pretty recently when I had to trash a motherboard just because the PCIe-slot wasn’t working anymore.
There might be some kind of service to repair that, but if so I suppose a new MoBo is less expensive.