during a new mandrake 8.1 install I got a error message saying that "grep could not be installed because of an error. Continue Y/N?" I continued and the install finished with no problems. I figure I can just upgrade the grep package post-install.

After the install, the boot starts and image loads, but when it begins to start services, the boot fails with "IError: cannot open framebuffer device: No such file or directory"

Could these two problems be related?

I can't get into Linux at all, but win2k will boot fine (it's a dual boot machine). I can boot using the rescue option from the cd, but I'm not sure how to fix the problem.

Has anyone had the same problem? Maybe it's a bad cd or .iso?

Allways check md5sum against the iso files, I guess you downloaded the files in windows, I think there is an md5sum checker written for windows architecture as well, I am not sure though, do googling to find out. I remember when I downloaded the mandy isos within linux (easier for me to check md5sum) and I tried to install it first the installation complained about X-server package to be corrupted, but when I did upgrade installation afterwards, the X was installed without a glitch, so try to run installation again and choose upgrade, if it won't help, then do fresh install (this is in the case you are sure that md5sums are correct).

and here is md5sum.exe for windows