I fell into deep shi@t on this one. Before I go further:

2.5 ghz intel proc. 1 gig ram. 60 gig primary hdd, 80 gig seconday hdd, ATI card,

My master and slaves are correct (for hdd and the two optical drives)

Here is the problem:

I "installed" Linux MEPIS 3.43 and restarted, per the instructions. Unfortunately upon reboot, the computer can not find either hdd but it can find my optical drives.

Stranger still, when I pop the live MEPIS cd back in (which is how I am able to get online now and write this) and look into the "mnt" directory, I see the three (3) MEPIS hdd I made earlier during the install process (root, swap, home) but nothing is in them. Nothing, not even folders. 0 kb. So, I re-installed and ran through the same process, and got the same result.

This will be a "linux only" box, so I did not install grub or samba.

I am totally lost. I don't know WTF or WTH is happening.

Did you at least install a bootloader? You say you didn't install grub but you still need grub (or lilo) to boot linux.

I should clarify....

When I say I looked into the 'mnt" directory, I did that by clicking on the "home" icon for the "demo" account running off the ramdisc, and then went into a separate directory labeled "mnt".

However, if I click on the Kwikdisc icon, I see hda1 (root) hda2 (swap) and hda3 (home) of the user account I made during install and yes....there are things in those (i.e., the standard default folders, files, etc that you would expect any newly created account to display).

I hope that helps. Thanks!!

Centil...I will try that asap and report my findings here when I am done. Thanks for the suggestion.

Centinul...thanks....my stupidity knows no bounds. LOL.

/ I really mean it when I call myself n00b
// Repeat after me: MBA Whore is Sofa King We Todd Ed
/// Everything boots normally now, thanks!

LOL. At least you found the problem