I got a copy of redhat linux from a book that i bought a couple of months ago. i installed it on my computer with a duel boot. I was having problems with the mouse and a couple of other issues. i tried to reinstall linux even went so far as to reinstall windows but my computer will nolonger read the disk at boot or in windows. has anyone had this problem before? any help would be greatly appreciated thanx.

yup, with a very old distro [ old now at least ]
I had this problem on a laptop, neither windows or Mandrake 6.1/2 [ Helios ] would even boot off the cd.

Turns out it was the bios saying that it wasn't a plug and play os [ pnp os in most bios settings ]
as soon as I reset that to itis a plug and play os, everything started working fine.

don't know if it will help you, but it can't hurt.

I suggest you get yourself an up-to-date distro, as much has changed (for the better) over the last year.
kubuntu is good for beginners. Get kubuntu 6.06.1LTS here:

http://www.kubuntu.org/download.php#lts
(Edit: Other people are recommending PCLinuxOS, there are lots to be found at http://distrowatch.org )
I realise your computer is not currently working, so borrow another to get this download and burn it.

Burn the file to a CD as an iso. If when you look at the burned CD, if you just see one file called something.iso, you burned it wrong and it will not boot. Read up on burning iso files, and try again.

When you boot from the kubuntu disk. It boots to a "Live" version, which just runs from the CD, not touching your hard disk, so it runs slowly, but you can use it.

Your hard disk isn't currently recognised by windows, so it needs to be tidied up so windows can be re-installed. (You should install win first, and linux second, or win will loose your linux installation).

Kubuntu "live" can be used to fix up your hard disk, so win will see it.

Boot from the kubuntu disk.

Mouse to the K -> System -> Konsole (Terminal Program)
A boring black Terminal window opens.
Type sudo -i in the terminal, then press return.
You get a different prompt, saying you are root.

Type fdisk /dev/hda in the terminal, then press return.
You are at the fdisk menu.
Press m (then return) to see the menu of the single-letter commands.
Press p (then return) to list your partitions
Press d (then return) to delete the last partition in the list
Press p (then return) to list your partitions
Press d (then return) to delete the last partition in the list
Repeat until there are no partitions left.

Now create one new (DOS) partition that uses all the disk..
Edit:Mark that partition as bootable
Write the changes to the disk
Then exit fdisk. We are done.

Close all windows, Go to K-> Logout -> Turn off computer.
Remove the kubuntu CD

Boot from your windows CD, and let windows install.

Once windows is re-installed, reboot from the kubuntu disk.

Click the "Install" icon.

It offers to install "Using spare space on the windows partition", or something similar. Let it do this, and let it chose the defaults. It'll shrink your windows partition and call it /dev/hda1 and use the spare space to make 2 partitions for kubuntu, one probably called /dev/hda2 for kubuntu and one called /dev/hda3 for "swap". [Maybe the other way round]. It will then install kubuntu to its partition.

Then it'll install grub, and that'll let you choose win or kubuntu at boot.

There's more help available on the (k)ubuntu forum on this site.