I installed mandrake 9.2 rc2 on a seperate hard drive from my windows xp drive, and then i decided to put my xp drive back in my computer. I didn't have any trouble setting up a dual boot system, but i can't access my windows files from linux. whenever i try mounting my xp drive i get this error:

Could not mount device.
The reported error was:
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda1,
or too many mounted file systems

I don't think i have too many mounted file systems, just my cd rom and floppy, and i've heard that mandrake is supposed to be able to read ntfs. also, i checked in my mnt/windows directory and there's nothing in it. anyone know how i can mount my windows drive? I'm not very good at commands either, so go easy on me.

could you post the contents of your /etc/fstab?

ok:

/dev/hdb1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hdb6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=udf:iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,codepage=850,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hd auto user,kudzu,exec,noauto,iocharset=iso8859-1,umask=0,codepage=850 0 0

see if it helps to change this to
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hd ntfs user,kudzu,exec,noauto,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

If it is ntfs, that is. If the filesystem is fat32, change the ntfs to vfat.

also, make sure /mnt/hd exists

how do i gain permission to write it? i don't have a root login option.

open a terminal and then become root using su.
then open the /etc/fstab with an editor of choice. E.g. by
kedit /etc/fstab

ok, i changed it and it's still showing the error. still nothing in mnt/hd or mnt/windows

what if you get rid of the kudzu in that line?

removed kudzu and still have the error and empty mnt's

could you post the output of
fdisk -l

you have to be root to run this. It lists the available drives/partitions and some information about them.

and also the /etc/fstab as it is now.

fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/disc: 40.0 GB, 40060403712 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 5174 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 = 7741440 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target0/lun0/part1 * 1 5173 39107848+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/disc: 20.0 GB, 20020396032 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38792 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1 * 1 12190 6143728+ 83 Linux
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part2 12191 38792 13407408 5 Extended
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part5 12191 13205 511528+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part6 13206 38792 12895816+ 83 Linux


ect/fstab:

/dev/hdb1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hdb6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
none /mnt/cdrom supermount dev=/dev/scd0,fs=udf:iso9660,ro,--,iocharset=iso8859-1 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,codepage=850,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hdb5 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hd ntfs user,exec,noauto,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0

ok, I tried your settings in the fstab and I get the same error as you. I'm pretty sure getting rid of iocharset and codepage options will fix it.
/dev/hda1 /mnt/hd ntfs user,noauto,exec,umask=0 0 0
you could also try
/dev/hda1/ /mnt/hd ntfs user,noauto,exec,iocharset=utf8,umask=0 0 0

AWESOME! the first line fixed it! I was starting to worry it would never work. Hopefully if anyone else has this problem they can figure it out from here.