aaaah. my computer just doesnt work anymore, im on my rommate's.
ill explain everything i did.

first i had windows. then i installed mandrake in dual-boot. everything was good. then someday windows, as usual, wouldnt work anymore. so i formatted my windows drives and was only running on linux. i did the formating from the mandrake install screen. you know, i deleted all partitions, then created a /, a /home and a swap for linux, journalised ext3 or something. then with the rest of the space, i created a 10go partition if ever i wanted to reinstall windows, and two more of 25go for programs and games, which i formated in fat32 because i know linux cant write on ntfs partitions. when i started linux and went in the /mnt, they were all there and i could write on it. it was all fine.

then some friends decided to make a lan at my appartment so i thought i might reinstall windows to make the games easier to play. so i put on the winshit xp cd, reboot and boot from cd. it said, as usual, something like "looking for your material or whatever" and the, instead of having the setup screen, it went black and nothing happened, even after mannnny minutes. i thought it might be the cd so i tried 2 more different windows xp cds. it was doing the same. i then found a windows 2000server cd and i tried to install it. it was fine until it arrived to the screen where you chose the partition where you want to install. there were my 3 linux partitions, which were "unknown" and my three windows partitions,which were fat32. i chose my 10go one but it said the the partition was not compatible. it said the same for the 2 other. i thought maybe it was because linux formatted fat32 linux partitions were not exactly the same. i was able to get into dos-like command line and i could, using windows installation, format my 3 partitions. i was then confident it would work, but no, still apparently not compatible. so that was it, i couldnt install windows.

i said "oh whatever, i still have linux and i can play those games anyway". but since i tried to install windows, it kinda deleted LILO, as always when installing windows while having linux. so when i rebooted, a message said "cant load exploitation system". not having LILO on anymore, i couldnt start linux and i didnt have my mandrake cds with me. so my computer wasnt working.

2 days later, i brought my computer to my brother, which can fix anything, and explained the situation. he wanted to install LILO using his mandrake 9 cds, but for some reason, while updating the packages, it said something about not being able to do something with /mnt/mnt/hda5 (yeah im not clear, but i dont remember). so i couldnt install LILO, thus making linux work, thus making my computer work. my brother then had to leave for a couple of days so i was left alone. i took his linux debian cd (which is the first distro i used) and wanted to install it. thats what i did. i installed debian. then again, i rebooted my computer. debian started, but not the GUI. i was left on the command line. for some obscure reason, my login wouldnt work so i have to login as root all the time. but i dont know how debian works really. x wont start when i type "startx" or "init5", i cant find the xorg.conf or any x configuration file nothing works, aaaar.

then finally, earlier today, i could get my mandrake 10.1 cds back. "hurray!" i thought. alas. so again i put the cd inside, boot, start the installation. it detects us devices and AGAIN an error message. this time, saying :

"Could not uncompress second stage ramdisk. this is probably and hardware error while reading the data. (this may be caused by a hardware failure or a Linux kernel bug)"

i went in the logs to see what i could find there :

"found a mandrakelinux cdrom, good news!
total memory : 896 mbytes
trying to load /sysroot/tmp/image/install/stage2/mdkinst-stage2.bz2 as a ramdisk
reading compressed ramdisk : 10 -ERROR
unsetting automatic"

what is it!? i cant install mandrake anymore.

aaaar. i badly need my computer. i got a lot of important work to do on it using autocad and all.

and thats where im up to. sitting there while my roomate works, hoping someone know how to fix all this s***t.

how could i format everything using debian command line?

aaaar, help

thanks a loooot guys!

the first step obviously is to make a backup of your stuff..(use knoppix/mepis and either copy to another hdd/upload to a server/write a cd) to me it looks like your file systems have been corrupted beyond recognition....get hold of a win 98 boot floppy..
http://freepctech.com/pc/002/files010.shtml

..boot without cdrom support..fdisk..KILL all partitions and leave your HDD unpartitioned..create a huge(use all space) Fat 32 partition...reboot...format c: /u...install winxp...make sure you "leave the file system intact(fat32) ...

fire up your mandrake cd and repartition whatever you need..as a precaution i always turn off swap and defragment windows so that partitioning doesnt screw up..you need to use fdisk to create that fat32 partition cause if you dont you will HAVE to use NTFS during xp install..(which is a PITA)

oh and check your cdrom drive..im guessing it might be faulty..

oh ill try that!

but for my cdrom, its ok. while on debian, i could mount it and open the windows and mandrake cds (even though i dont have wine or cedega to install it and mandrake well i didnt know how to install it via debian).

OF COURSE, my floppy doesnt work, the damned thing. i cant boot with the bootdisk

when i type "fdisk" in debian, it says :

Usage : fdisk [-] [b SSZ] [-] device
E.g.: fdisk /dev/hda (for the first IDE disk)

and other examples.

what sould i do to kill the partions?

yes, im kinda newbie

so ok, i put my hard drive on my roomate's computer and formated the three windows disk. but winshit xp wont install anyway.
and plus, i now have debian saying, upon startup, :
Kernel panick : attempted to kill init!

now absolutely nothing works. i cant even hope to format through linux

now i am REALLY pissed

DONT use any linux fdisk utility..they were always problematic when trying to install xp...take your hard drive to your room mates computer and use the win 98 boot disk and wipe the drive clean, deleting all partitions using fdisk..delete all non-dos and dos-partitions...then create a new primary partition giving it all the space in the HDD...

note : this version of fdisk on the win 98 boot floppy does not recognize hard drive sizes properly and so will list your drive as 10GB or something...dont panic...just ignore it and give fat 32 all the space on your drive, install xp and use mdk later to repartition(or deb or whatever)..

i dont mean to bug you in your time off crisis...but a subject like "having major problems, help" turns away a lot of people from reading your post...and thus getting good help...try to be more specific with the subject lines..best of luck!

now it worked.
the kernel panic is over. i did cfdisk and deleted all of them partitions. then i inserted my winshit xp cdrom and it installed
finally
now i just need to install linux.
what would you suggest between fedora core and mandrake?

thanks a lot!!

Glad to see your problem got cleared up.

As for what to install, My recommendation would be Mandrake. That's just because it has always worked well for me, and Fedora has caused me difficulties. But I am sure someone here will tell you that Mandrake is crap, nand Fedora is the best thing since sliced bread. And then someone will push for Ubuntu. And I can almost *guarantee* that someone will insist Slackware is your best choice. And on and on.

Distro is largely personal preference. Choose one, and try to stick with it for a while. If you can't work through any problems you might run into with help from here, or you find it just doesn't feel *right* for you, then try another. But use each one long enough to get a good feel for it.

Padma, ure absolutely right...i say archlinux rules...best package manager ive seen..NOT user friendly like the others though..if ure a noob u cant go wrong with mepis..

yeah well im used to mandrake but i have the opportunity to install fedora. but yeah, i think ill stick to mandrake.
thanks for your help and recommendations