Wierd problem with installing mandrake MNF or SNF.

I have tried every option, (I have two disks and have tried all of this with both) deleting entire disk, custom partitioning yada yada.

Now the first disk I tried is 810MB and it sat there telling me it was formatting hda1 for like 9 hours. I kinda think it would finish with not much more than a CD in that time. The CD spins at full speed and the HDD light stays solid the whole time too.

I finally just give up and power off and try again. The next time I try there are linux partitions visible, but it always want to reformat and never finishes.

I even wiped both drives and tried again and although this time it only had the option to use free space.... three hours later, same thing.

I have tried MNF and SNF and the same thing happens.

I have in the past had mandrake 8.1 on this machine and it formatted the drives fine, just couldn't run X because of lack of memory.

I had no problem wiping the drives, formatting for windows, or installing smoothwall (that is another issue with another thread).

Tottaly confused here.

Any advice? Please!