I have winXP on my first hard drive. I installed Fedora core 2 (on my 1st hd) as a dual boot. It all booted up perfectly. However, in fedora, I couldn't see my 2nd hard drive (fat32). (I had previously had Mandrake 9.2 with XP and had no trouble seeing my fat32 second hard drive).

So I decided to install Mandrake 10.1 official. I used a spare partition on my 1st hard drive to make space for Mandrake. During the install I tried unsuccesfully to set up my HP laser printer 3030. When I went to boot up Mandrake got stuck at the part where it looks for new hardware - I eventually had to reset the computer. Same problem on the reboot. (Windows still worked). So I reinstalled Mandrake - same problem. So I unplugged everything from my computer (printer, Palm cradle, usb drive, bluetooth dongle) and reinstalled Mandrake with no printer.
It booted up into Mandrake no problem - good.

While I was in Mandrake I modified the boot loader to add Fedora (I"d carefully made note of which partition was which during the install of Mandrake). However, when I rebooted, Fedora wouldn't work - I got a message that it couldn't boot off that partition. So I booted back into Mandrake and was pleased to see that I could see my fat 32 second hard drive.

I plugged in my usb drive but I couldn't find it - I looked in /mnt where all the drives appear in Mandrake. Never mind I thought - it might appear when I reboot. Then I changed the screen resolution from 1024 x 768 to 1280 x 960 - I had to log out and log in again but all was well.
I decided to reboot to see if I could see my usb drive - but
now it won't boot up into Mandrake again - it freezes at the part where it says looking for new hardware.

So I have 2 problems
1. Mandrake won't boot - it freezes
2. I can't figure out how to get it to see Fedora

What can I do? Should I just forget Mandrake and reinstall Fedora? (It took all night to do the updates so I"m not keen on that)

btw - all through this my windows XP has been no problem (its what I'm using to view this forum)

Sorry for the long post but I wanted to explain everything.

Reljoy

An addition - I removed my USB flash drive and rebooted - Mandrake booted up no problems at all.
Does this mean that I can't use my USB flash disk unless I do something first?

I then went to look at my disk partitions and it seems that the partition that I had put Fedora on has been mucked up - it is no longer registering as "/"
Does this mean that I can only have one partition called "/" ?
If so, how can I have Mandrake and Fedora?
hda1 = /mnt/win_C
hda5 = /mnt/win_d
hda8 = / ext3 (for Mandrake)
hda9 = swap (for Mandrake)
hda10 = /home (for Mandrake)
hda6 = ??? ( it was / for Fedora)
hda7 = swap for Fedora
hdb1 = /mnt/win_c2

If Mandrake cannot detect usb devices at bootup, it sounds like a Mandrake issue.

I believe you will need unique label names for all your partitions. If this is not possible, you might be able to manually edit /etc/fstab to use device names instead of label names. Perhaps a better plan would be to label your "/" partition as "mandrake" for Mandrake and "fedora" for Fedora. You could then reference them in /etc/fstab as:
...depending on if it is Mandrakes /etc/fstab or Fedora's.

Disk labels are created by mke2fs and may be changed using either e2label or tune2fs. You will also have to make corresponding changes in /boot/grub/grub.conf "root=" entry.

sorry but I didn't understand any of that