I installed Linux mandrake 9 a couple months ago, I really enjoyed it. It was on the same drive as windows xp, because I was pretty new to Linux and was just playing around with it. I went back to full xp for a bit and thought I would give Fedora core 2 a try. The install went well but when I rebooted, the screen froze. I could not go to my bios or boot menu. So I tried to mess with the drives to see if I could get anything, because nothing would work. So I had to take it in our local shop to be fixed.

Just a simple Fdisk fixed everything. So I went back to XP but really wanted to be back on linux again. So I gave mandrake 10 a shoot. Again install went well, but as soon as I rebooted, again the same freeze I had before. So I messed with my HD's again took a cable out, and was able to boot from an xp cd. I went to give it one more shoot, after reading many tutorials and linux help forums. Same thing happend again. So Any ideas of what's going on, or what I am doing wrong. Oh, and this time no cable testing, because as I tried to fix it once more, I had a mini blueish explosion and now it will not even turn on.

pentium 4 2.8 ghz
512MB DDR SDRAM
Maxtor 120gb
Seagate 160 gb (local shop installed)
nvidia geforce 128

jeffz; not quite sure of ur cable problem?
u do not mean hot plugging? that would give that blueish explosion( shorting cable) which then u will have to check what else might have been damaged. past the cable to where it was connected to? try not being rash but do things easy, slowly with care. ur are dealing with electrical conections. in removing any device from case & mobo disconnect power always!
as for dual boot recommend & advice leave w as first os then install linux. during linux install , linux will ask if u would prefer to reduce w,s partition to accommodate linux more space incleding swap space. then adding to linux is easier.

Yeah that is pretty much what happend with the cable. It was my own fault for not turning off the power. Guess it was just with the frustration with trying to get linux back. Is that something to be really worried about? I'm taking it into the shop tommrow. Also I tryed to install it on a second haddrive, and windows still on my C: but after that I was getting not device found. That's when I tryed the reinstall again and go the same freeze. My pc is a gateway, and I just got the gatway welcome/boot screen but could not go into bios. It was just frozen, so I guess the 2nd time is a close I had to having it right, maybe just messed up the boot option? If so what would be the best boot option for diffrent OS on diffrent drives?