Ok,
I have made a little head-way since yesterday at installation...Now I have a brand new problem. I have burned the iso's using Nero (is there some special method to burning the CD's?) and made a boot floppy. I have a 19 gb HDD I want to dual boot XP and MDK9.1. I have allocated 4 GB for a linux partition {FAT32 Extended Partition and Logical Drv (primary is NTFS)}
When I re-start my machine with the floppy in with cdrom.img it loads the installer. I put the CD with iso's in and it says loading into memory. Then the screen changes to a text format with all kinds of what looks like files loading then the following error comes up(reads exactly as follows):

error in exec stage 2 :-(
trying to execute ' /user/bin/runinstall112' from istallation volume
fatal error occured
FATAL ERROR IN STAGE1: Exec format error.

I cant recover from this
You may reboot your system

(END)

any Ideas what is happening..Ive been at my first install for 2 days and am loosing faith..

THANX...
jayone

I have had some good and bad luck burning iso's in Nero. I think if you read the instructions it tells you not to use the wizard when burning iso's.(or I read this somewhere, can't remember) Mine started burning better when I did not use the wizard. Sounds like your burn did not work. If your computer will boot from the cd rom, then you do not need the floppy. Check your bios settings and have your cd rom boot first. Hope this helps.

Yes there is a special method for burning ISO images with Nero
http://www.linuxiso.org/viewdoc.php/neroburning.html

Its best just to leave unallocated space avialable to install linux instead of creating partitions in windows. Most linux distros require a native linux fileystem for installation and most create more then one partition. Be sure to select expert mode. This will give you complete control over the install and keep from wiping out your existing windows.

See documentation at MDK's website www.linuxmandrake.com