Starting with some BG info would be helpful:

I've been running Windows XP on my system for a long time. Recently, I decided to switch to linux. I'm trying to use CollegeLinux. I've followed everything to a T and installed it fine. Though when I reboot, Windows still comes up, and crashes soon after. Which I don't understand how this is happening, I removed windows from my hard drive.

So basically, my present situation is such:

My computer won't boot CollegeLinux
Still tries to boot Windows XP
All in all is ticking me off.

I probably did something wrong in the whole paritioning/install somewhere and just didn't realize it. But at this point I'm stumped, and have no machine of my own to use in the time being aside from my roomies. And he's getting pissed at my constant search for answers. Hope someone can make sense of this, thanks!

that would sound like either grub or lilo (the linux bootloders) is seeing a bootable fat32 entry in your partition table. maybe you didn't partition the drives quite right? i'm only guessing to be honest, but if you installed after you thought XP was gone, it seems likely.

what does "tries to boot xp" really mean? what happens? i assume there's no XP startup screen or anything... is there no option for linux at all? a "linux failsafe" even? which bootloader is this? lilo or grub?

When XP tries to boot, there is a load screen. Then it just reboots a few seconds later. I haven't gotten an option to boot linux so far. Lilo is the loader I'm using.

well it really seems that the install just plain didn't go down well... if you've not even got a linux entry at all... well either something failed badly, or you went wrong somewhere. i'd suggest trying a different distro, or at least a full reinstall again. if you're as new as you say, you might want to grab mandrake 10.1 or fedora core 3 from iso.linuxquestions.org