Red Hat Linux 9 Installation Help...I'm a newbie around here

[brista]

I just finished building a new computer for myself, the specs of which I'll post a little further down. I'm attempting to install Red Hat 9 onto this box, however, regardless of whether I use text or graphical install modes at somepoint in the installation "Install exited abnormally - Signal 11" will come up and of course I have to shut down or restart the machine. Right now the hard drives are empty. I also MD5SUM checked each of the ISOs and all passed, I also did the Installation media check and again all 3 discs passed. Anyone have any ideas of whats wrong. Heres the specs on the computer:
AMD Athlon XP 2700+ Processor
ASUS A7N8X Motherboard
512 MB of DDR 3200 RAM (Ultra Memory brand)
Dual 80 GB 7200 RPM Hard Drives with Hard Drive Coolers (Hitachi/IBM Deskstar)
Full Tower Chieftec Case
52x/24x/48x CD-R/RW/Reader (Sony)
16x/10x/40x CD & DVD Burner/Reader (NEC)
3 Case Fans
3.5" Floppy Drive
250 mb USB 2.0 External Zip Drive
Altec Lansing 5.1 Surround Speakers
64 MB DDR GeForce Ti 4200 with S-Video Out (XFX make)
400 Watt Power Supply (CompUSA Brand)
17" CRT Monitor

I know the processor isn't overheating nor is the motherboard or any other internal peripherals. Everything runs at a healthy temperature. The NEC DVD Burner I listed above is from a DELL Dimension, and I wonder if there isn't something proprietary about it screwing everything up. Thanks everyone for all your help, its greatly appreciated!!!

Brian

[yowwww]

have you disabled plug n play in your bios?

[Dolda2000]

Have you set something that even looks close to overclocking in your hardware drive BIOS settings? Setting some parameters incorrectly may cause bitrot in the RAM.

[kpzani]

This also happened to me. My install would die at random points with different error messages. I believe my problem was caused by an intermittent problem on my hard drive. to get around it I installed Mandrake first on a very basic install - but most importantly I partitioned and formatted my drive. I find mandrake has the fastest install of any linux I have used.

Once installed, I then stuck redhat straight on and only formatted the / partition leaving my swap and /home intact and this worked. Might have been blind luck as the dodgy area ended up in /home or swap.

But it worked for me.

I recomend trying a CD based distro like morphix. It is a good check for hardware compatibility. If 75% of your gear works in morphix then it is worth hunting for the rest.

[brista]

have you disabled plug n play in your bios?

There were some strange default settings that I changed with the help of some folks from the AMD Motherboard Forums. I have not looked into the PNP settings in BIOS, I will do that. Thanks in advance.

Brian

PS Did you lose power like we did on Thursday?

[yowwww]

yup, my power was out for 24 hours str8.

I right in the middle of emerging xfree in gentoo

That was quite the idiotic design they had set up to supply power.