Alright, after waiting throught the whole Mandrake 9.2 installation I get to the point where it installs a bootloader. Just for information, I have Windows XP Pro on the system and I want to dual-boot the machine. I have little experience with Linux, so I won't understand a super-technical answer. What happens is this:

I get a message during the bootloader installation that says something similar to this- Bootloader installation failed:.

It's like the error code is a colon and a period. THIS TELLS ME NOTHING!

Thanks for any advice,

Have you tried booting up on the 1st cd again and pressing F1 then typing "rescue" (without quotes of course) and then you can type help to see the commands for re-soing the bootloader from there. Should work fine. I recently had to do that myself 'cause my XP part crashed and had to be reinstalled, just after getting my linux all set the way I wanted. As everyone knows those people at M$ think they're the boss so XP takes over the MBR. After reinstalling I had to do the same thing I am suggesting to you. Good luck and let me know.