Wasn't what I asked for - fdisk works with (block) devices, not partitions (as it tried to tell you). Use the command I posted.

Do you have flash drives plugged in? I've ran into a few problems in the past after I've rebooted with flash drives plugged in. If you do have flash drives plugged in, either lower their boot order below the HDDs or unplug them.

I unplugged everything but my cd/dvd drives, my main hard drive (the other one is a 20g that gets a bsod after a few minutes of running), and unplugged every usb device in there except my mouse and keyboard.

Oh, alright, i thought you meant to 'fdisk -l' my hard drive.

I'll have to do that in a little bit though, I'm not at home right at the moment.

This may not be your problem, but my laptop has a "retarded" BIOS that reads one of my drives as being UDMA/133 when, in fact (and when queried) it's only UDMA/100. As a result, GRUB cannot boot from that drive. (After booting from the other drive, the second drive throws up several errors 'till it gives up and resets the access to UDMA/100. Then it works fine.)

So, consider installing GRUB on, say, a memory stick with the kernel and initial RAM disk images on it and seeing if you can boot from it. Or, since you can boot from a CD, install GRUB and the boot files on a CD (or CDRW), and boot from it.

That's sort of what I'm doing at the moment, just instead of using GRUB I'm using backtrack. I've never heard of GRUB before though, is it another version of linux?

When I do a kde copy to my ram, if i turn off my computer at any point I have to do it over again, I wasn't aware that I had a possibility of 'installing' to a stick of RAM, unless that's what you mean?
Right now, I've been booting off of the CD for about 10 months trying to get an operating system onto a hard drive so I can just use the cd as backup.

GRUB (The "GRand Universal Bootloader) is one of several replacements for older, propitiatory, boot loaders such as the Windows NTLDR.

In order for an OS to be loaded, a small (512byte) program is installed on a hard drive in the first sector of the first cylinder of the hard drive, before the start of the first partition. This is called the "Master Boot Record" (MBR), and the program installed in you computers "mother board" in read-only memory called the "Basic Input/Output System" (BIOS) is automatically run every time you start your computer. That hard-wired program first checks your system by running a "Power On Self Test" (POST) that checks your computers memory and the devices connected to the mother board. When the POST finishes, it scans the hard drives (and other devices) connected to your system for any active MBRs in the order you specified when you configured the boot order in your BIOS. It then loads the MBRs into the computers "Random Access Memory" (RAM) and transfers control to that MBR program.

If it can not find any active MBR, it produces a message like "No OS found" and halts.

It was this small program and the few files it needs to run that I suggested you put in a RAM stick, not whole installation.

But your apparent lack of familiarity with the loading procedures prompts me to ask a simple question: Is it possible that you (or your vendor) has turned on a "boot virus protection" option in your BIOS? Those options protect the MBR on the hard drive by preventing any programs from writing to the MBR. If this kind of protection is active on your system, then you will never be able to boot from your hard drive because the essential bootstrap code will never be written to your drive.

Would you reccomend installing GRUB instead of trying to use what I have now, or should I just check to see whether or not I have a boot virus protection enabled?

I've been through every section of my BIOS many times in the last 10 months, read through everything, figured out whats what, what it does, etc, and I've never seen any form of a 'boot virus protection' option in there; So, unless it was previously activted before I recieved the computer (which it wasnt, because it worked up until 10 months ago), then I would have no idea if I'd accidentally turned it on without knowing what it was or not. But the most I've really messed with through the BIOS was my hard drive, and the boot order.

Hi,

Post the output of 'fdisk -l' from the cli as was requested. We can't diagnose if you don't provide the requested information.

I'll be home in about 40 mins, ill post it then.
sorry about the misreading, I was in a hurry, had to get to school.

OneBuck: Here's the output:
Here's the output:

'fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hdd: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
16 heads, 63 sectors/track, 155061 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 1008 * 512 = 516096 bytes

__Device____Boot__Start__End___Blocks____Id__System
/dev/hdd1____*______3____409___204800____7___HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/hdd2__________409__155059_77943808__7__HPFS/NTFS
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.'

Well, Linux won't boot on a NTFS partition anyway.

Please download and burn a gparted live-cd and reformat your hard disk with it.
- Begin with erasing all partitions. This will let you with your whole disk as an empty space.
- Then make a first partition (which should be *bootable*) of around 13 G (filesystem Linux ext3),
- another one of 2G (filesystem Linux swap),
- and use the remaining space fot the third partition (filesystem Linux ext3).

Then you could try to install Slackware 12.2 -- I use this one but choose the one you prefer

At time of (trying to) install it use your partitions as follows :
- first partition for /
- second partition for swap
- third partition for /home

Hope it will work

Thats not even close to my problem. lol
I'll dual boot it after I even get an operating system to work on it. I've installed linux on this machine many times, but thanks for the help.

Sorry, double posted.

That can't be correct - an 80 Gig disk would have to be LBA (255 heads). Something has screwed the disk geometry, and so the cylinder count will be way too large.Now that's a worry.
No idea what to suggest - maybe a BIOS update ???.