RH9 help

hi i have decided to install RH9 on a low grade pc to have as a experiment box so i can learn linux commands. This system wont boot from cd so i created a bootdisk using a windows machine by putting the bootdisk.img on floppy disk via rarwritewin i think its called that and i insert it into the system it says welcome to redhat setup please select what install you want (graphical or text). I then select graphical and fill in the details(language, keyboard type) then i place the cd in my drive and press enter it then pops up the red hat 9 (shrike) disk was not found in any drive please insert it to continue i keep re-trying with different disks but still the same. I bought RH9 along with a linux book so it cant be a download problem can anyone help. I will be very greatful to anyone who can help me because this has been annoying me now for 3 weeks ive tried everything even getting another copy from the shop where i got the orginal copy of RH9 from. Can Anyone help me with this problem?

Are you certain that the cd-rom drive works?

yes the system used to have win98 on and it worked fine but i formatted the hard disk and now i get the above problems.

You say 'low grade pc'. What is it exactly? Some older boxes had crappy proprietary sound card/cd-rom combos, where the controller for the cd-rom is built onto the sound card. If that's the case, the redhat boot disk may not support wierd controllers.
Just a thought.

its a pentium(r) 200mhz with 96mb ram and 3gb harddisk. The make is a dell optiplex it just meets system requirements for RH9 according to a book i bought. Would installing a new cd rom drive help, i have a spare 52 speed one which i can install would that sort out my problem?

I don't know, but it couldn't hurt too much to try.

ive just managed to get into the bios, it has no visual promt i entered it by mistake (left a book on the keyboard) and there an option "boot files:" it currently say hard disk should i change it to cd?

Set your BIOS to boot to CD 1st, HD 2nd, then do a reboot with the CD installed. That should get you to the RH installation you need.

Since you got to the BIOS my accident, do a little testing first to get the process to get into the BIOS first, reboot and try hitting the F1 or F2 key prior to system post. Than make the boot priorty changes. Once you've got the OS installed you might want to go back to BIOS and reset it. I prefer to have a bot sequence set to floppy drive 1st, HD 2nd, CD 3rd.

i have tried all common bios keys to access the bios and none work. I had to press delete last time but only after i had caused a boot up error by leaving a book on the keyboard. Now i cant even re-make the error to go into bios. Is there anyway to find out the exact key to get into bios also theres no prompt to access bios

I hate when that happens. Have you tried key combos or just single key entries ?

I want to say that Ctrl + F1 or Ctrl + F2 should work, not sure. I have a Optiplex at the shop and I'll try and look up the bios access key combo in the morning.

its like someone has gone over the pc with a fine comb picking out every referance to the word bios.
If you could look up the bios access info i would be very greatful.

I got into my Optiplex GX110 by using the F2 key at boot. I had to hit right at the moment of power up. Wait to long and it gets to post in about 1 sec.

One of my cohorts said he thought it might be the Delete key at boot on some of the optiplex's. I tried it here, didn't work on the box that the F2 key worked, but it didn't hose aything up either, just in case that particular key gives you hestitation in trying

well its like when the pc boots up its not expecting a key press because when i caused the keyboard error it said press delete to enter setup then when i re-booted it wouldnt accept the delete key to enter the bios. I might just bin this test pc and get a more recent test pc for linux.

Curious, have you tried holding down a key, say the Ctrl key while booting and then the del key right at the moment of boot ?

i havent actually ill try in an hour or so and ill post the results.