Geez, could it be anymore difficult?? I tried RHL9 and it didn't work and Mandrake 9.1 was coughing and sputtering and couldn't install. I finally nailed it down to this: On Sony VAIO notebooks, the PC Card CDROM drive is bootable. Because of this it doesn't look like a PC Card CDROM drive until the installer goes finds that there is a PC Card slot on the machine. The ensuing comedy of errors (CDROM drive that is ATAPI suddenly gets taken out and put on PC Card bus) causes installers to hang. The solution: linux ide2=0x180,0x386 noauto Use that special boot up argument when starting the installer's boot (don't just hit ENTER).