noob with first setup
 

I have installed Mandrake 7.2 with Win XP on same drive. 2 problems so far. Windows does not show up in Lilo so I can dual boot. And I do not know how to show my usb ports to use flash drive or wifi adapter. This distro has 2 desktop environments, KDE and Gnome, but both are new to me. I am almost clueless with command promt. Have spent 2 weeks searching. Suggestions for reading materials?

Mandrake 7.2 is ancient; it reached end of life in 2000. It is, in fact, older than XP and completely unsupported.

I would suggest you get something newer, perhaps Mageia 4, which is a descendant of Mandrake. When you spin up the install, it should offer you an opportunity to replace the existing Linux install. It may also solve this problem for you; when I installed Mageia on my Win7 box, it set up the dual-boot flawlessly.

I did. And thank you.

Cool. Thanks for the update.