I have a new box running Intel Q6600 on Abit IP35 Pro. I fit in a SATA hard drive that is setup as IDE on BIOS (I mentioned this in particular because I think this is to do with the issue I am facing).

I currently run Windows Vista 64 and don't have any problem with it. Like my old box, I want to dual boot my Vista with Linux. Unfortunately I can't get any Linux running on my box.

My favourite distro Ubuntu (I tried both 7.10 and 8.04 beta) won't even boot (Live CD). I end up with BusyBox. I then tried the alternate CD installation, the installation was successful but when I boot I again ended up with BusyBox.

OpenSUSE 10.3 was installed and run properly but I can't get the driver for my ATI HD2600XT installed properly. The system was just frozen when I turned on the 3D Desktop.

Then I tried my luck with Fedora and Mandriva. They both won't be installed because they can't see my hard drive.

PCLinuxOS won't install too because it can't see my hard drive.

The fact that major distro like Fedora and Mandrive can't see my hard drive I suspect has something to do with my SATA drive beint setup as IDE instead of AHCI. But I can't change it to AHCI now as my Vista won't boot if I change it.

Any suggestion? Thank you.

since your HDD is set up as IDE and not SATA/AHCI, have you tried switchin the install target from say /dev/sda to /dev/hda? im not sure how likely it is but that just might be your problem. If it is then you shouldn't have anymore problems. If Fedora and Mandriva can't see your HDD it's probably because the IDE controller is confused and doesn't recognize your SATA drive properly, thus it can't tell the installers about it. Hope this helps!