when i installed linux mandrake 9.2 it seemed to install just fine but when i tryed to boot it it didnt do anything, it look like it boot but it would just sit there and the bar wouldnt even move, and when i tryed to boot my windows it wouldnt boot eather, it would restart. i coulnt do anything at all. so i uninstalled linux on it and had to reinstall windows and it worked... so it seems like this shity POS computer wont work if linux on there

does anyone out there know what i could to get linux to boot on my computer.

any error meaages ?
did you use GRUB or LILO ?
did the boot loader boot ?
did you set the bios accodingly ?
did the bootloader itself hang, or did the linux bootup hang.
how far does the boot get before hanging ?
and what bar ?

ohh, and what distro ?
plus, hadware info please

there wasnt any error messages and every thing seemed to be set up fine but it just didnt load

knoppix wont even load

im usein a HP pailion 522n
with a celeron processor

I just stuck an extra drive with Slack on it in my 510n. (Awful computers.) But it works great. Maybe try another distro. It might help if you took it step by step, too, like qwijibo was saying - what exactly did you do? Then maybe we could figure out what went wrong. Do you have one drive or two, did you install the loader on the mbr, etc. - do you have a 'hidden recovery partition' like me, which results in an error if you forget and tell LILO to boot Windows from hda1 so you have to go and edit lilo.conf to say hda2? *g* Stuff like that.

The fact that Knoppix won't load is very odd, but your CD-RW could be dying like mine is. Crap parts crammed into a micro-ATX case with ridiculously poor ventilation - everything in there overheats. I run it with the case open most of the time and just hope there's some useful parts in it when it croaks. I digress... Not sure what a 522 is like - hopefully better.