First thing's first: I've never installed or used Linux before save 30 minutes at work once 3 years ago.

I downloaded the hard drive floppy image off a Mandrake FTP for AMD64. Whenever I try to select my hard drive as an install option (after downloading the files for the installer), it crashes with the following:

Unable to handle kernel paging request<1> @ 000000008010DBEC
(register dump)
<0> Kernel panic: attempted to kill the idle task

I also get this from network install as well as from SuSE's installer if I try to use Installation - Safe Settings. Said distribution works but something is making the hard drive act as though it's in PIO mode -10 and the graphical UI is hideously slow.

I only tried CD install with Mandrake once so I'm hoping it'll install if I burn the discs to CD it'll go and not make a waste of CDs. But in any case, what gives? I'm using an nForce 3 motherboard with an Athlon 64.

Windows 2000 works fine as does XP-64, so the computer is fine.

And finally, which is probably the better distribution for newbies: Red Hat, Mandrake or SuSE?

Im not sure what you did in downloading a 'hard drive floppy image'... that does sound a bit dodgy
Anyway the error message that you are getting tells us that something really wrong has gone wrong with your attempt.!!

1 Suse install problem
Ive had a similar problem with installation on my new - powerful pc. The GUI is fuzzy and does not work once installed. I think this is because suse probably does not support your graphics card as yet. This means that it will not be able to automatically detect settings for you and set itself up so yout GUI windowing system works.... you will be able to do this manually though after you have installed the operating system.

2. Mandrake install attempt 2. I think that if you follow the directions for burning the 3 mandrake cds properly, it will install ok. It worked for me & many others.

An interesting point that might influence your decision is that Mandrake seems to support a wider range of grapic card than suse (note i say seems). Mandrake automatically detected the type of card i had and set up the windowing system automatically for me. Now once i got that set up, i was able to look at the relevant settings and use those to manually configure my suse install of x windows.

Basically for a new user it a toss up between suse & mandrake. Both systems are excellent systems for new & experienced linux users.

My advice is try to install the mandrake distro from cd. See how it suits you. If you want to try suse then print off a copy of your /etc/X11/Xfree** file (which will contain the settings to make your wiindows work). Install suse then edit the configuration file with the settings you had for mandrake..

does this make sense?

http://www.easylinuxcds.com/ just go there and buy the specific distro or distro's you're looking for

I mean the floppy image that lets you install Mandrake off your hard drive.