alright...I'm still stumped with the dual boot deal. I formated my HD, made 2 partitions, installed XP first then mandrake 10 and my windows disappeard! I already tried changing my lilo.conf and menu.1st but i still can't get it to work. also, I can't get mandrake to use my dial up connection. it detects my modem (us robotics fax modem, ext) but when I run the config tool, at the end it says "testing your connection" without even dialing it. It's detecting it in the right port, but it just won't dial. Some of the changes I made to the files mentioned above I have to idea how I managed to do them because it wouldn't let me save them at first. I had to be "root". I've spent quiet a bit of time searching forums and google but i still don't get it...some one help please. another thing...I have a external hard drive(usb) that i use to store all my files. It seems to be mounted but I can't get to my files from mandrake....thanks in advanced guys!!!

Change 1: (why do i feel like this is a major break-through?)

I modied my /boot/grub/menu.1st to the following in the "windows" section:

title windows
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1
makeactive
boot

I found this in this forum. I still cant boot windows but i got the equivalent of when you leave a diskette in your drive...

Invalid system disk
Replace the disk, and then press any key
(pressed any key and got
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER

can anyone see a mistake in this modification?