[8.0.4] Need help, cannot boot into Live CD.

[Rapture2k4]

Hi. My name is Rapture. I've been addicted to windows for 15 years...

Seriously though,
I've tried my hardest to understand posts on how to do boot options, alternate CDs, and the like. I really want to "try out" the OS before I install it, but for the life of me, I cannot get this CD to boot.

I've tried both the x32 and x64 CDs and here is my hardware:

Asus A8N32SLI Deluxe (nForce 4 chipset)
AMD FX-60 Socket 939 (Dual Core)
BFG GeForce 8800GTS (640mb model)
2xMaxtor 120GB SATA-II HDDs (Currently RAID 0)
D-Link WDA-23xx series WiFi (PCI)
Plextor 750a DVD Burner (IDE)
Antec 800w Power Supply
NO FLOPPY

The error I get on the latest (8.0.4) is:
If I acpi=off and noacpi in the little boot gui, it just hangs at a black screen (I happen to leave the room for a few hours to watch a movie and it was STILL black when I got back). I had a similar issue with 7.0, but it was before I put my HDDs in RAID and it wouldn't boot due to my gfx card or something and I gave up.

The other is:


Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 234428416
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 234428417
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 234428418
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 234428419
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 234428416
Buffer I/O error on device sda1, logical block 234428417
Buffer I/O error on device sr0, logical block 32

Which repeats 20-30 times in that exact order before I get to a shell prompt. I don't know what to type from there. I understand the fd0 is because I don't have a floppy but it keeps polling it anyways. I assume the sda1 is because I'm using nForce4 RAID and it can't see my HDDs properly. I have no idea what sr0 is.

Now, I really don't understand alot of the commands referenced on the forums and sorta need a step-by-step guide on how to get around my problem. Having so much trouble like this makes me understand why so many people stick with *******.

I have tried adding "irqpoll pci=noacpi acpi=off ide=nodma" to the end of the boot options but before the "--", but I get the same error sequence. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

[Rapture2k4]

Ok, I got it to boot into the LiveCD (all_generic_ide floppy=off). Everything appears to be working as intended.

Is there a way to detect my RAID 0 properly? When I go to install, it sees my drives individually with no partitions. I have Windows installed, but I don't know if I'll be able to resize the partition since it is striped.

Any clues?

[cariboo]

I would suggest using gparted to see if your partition is detected. to run gparted go to System-->Administration-->Partition editor. I would suggest you look in your bios to see if the floppy drive is enabled, if it is disable it.

Jim