when i try to partition my harddrive to install red hat 8.0 on my harddrive the following error comes up...

Could not allocate requested partitions: Partitioning Failed.
Could not allocate partitions as primary partitions.

I would guess that there isn't any unalocated space on your hard drive. linux needs its own space i.e. partitions and your existing windows is using the entire drive.

You will need to resize existing windows partitions to free up some space like 6-10gb as a min. You can use Partition Magic or a DOS program called fips located in the /dosutils directory of the 1st CD. There is also a linux app called parted that will also resize existing partitions.

BTW if your existing partition(s) is NTFS then the only app I know is Partition Magic that will resize.

You also might want to take a look at Redhats installation documentation on their website.