so im new to linux, today is my third day, first 2 days i was on MEPIS. today i decided to try out a different one to see if i may like another better so i decided to try Fedora core 6. i dont like it as much so im trying to reinstall MEPIS and its not letting me. im running the live CD and i click on MEPIS install. when i get to the partition part it wont allow me to choose a root partition, none shows up on the list. And when i try and install it on the entire disk it says "failed to create required partitions. REturning to step 1."

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 13 104391 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 14 23007 184699305 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 23008 24282 10241437+ 83 Linux

First, I would not partition the drive that way. Make the partitions only as big as needed--and leave the rest of the disk empty (unpartitioned)

Can you select manual partitioning during Mepis install and then simply delete the existing partitions and start over?

Recommended partitions:
/ 6GB
swap 1GB
data maybe 50-80GB (can be mounted at /home or maybe /home/Documents)
One way to use the extra space is to install other distros and multi-boot