HELP!!!

I recently purchased a new Dell Inspirion 5100 Notebook PC. This notebook has the ATI Mobility M7 (7500) Video chipset. I have a requirement for a dual (multi-boot) systems (Windows 2000, Red Hat Linux 8.0, VMware, etc..). The system came from dell with the hard disk (40 GB) already partition and loaded with Windows XP Home. The hard disk partition consisted of 2 partitions [1 - Non-Dos (31 Mb), 2 - NTFS (38.x Mb)]. Is the first partition the "Hybernation or Suspend-To-Disk " partition that is talked about in the article above?

I have since retained partition 1 - Non-Dos (31 Mb) which is still there, and deleted the 2 - NTFS (primary) partition. The 2 partition has been re-created to a 10 gig FAT32 primary partition and the rest as an 3 - EXT DOS partition (un partitioned and unformatted). The primary 2 - FAT32 partition has successfully loaded Windows 2000 Server.

However, the problems comes in when I am installing Red Hat Linux 8.0 using the 3rd partiton. Upon booting up from the CD (linux) process starts the GUI install, starts the anaconda, finds the video interface, does not recognizes the monitor type, then the screen goes blank and everything just stops right there. After pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL, the screen comes back on and performs an INIT6 and reboots.

Have you ever encountered this before? Could it have any thing to do with the "Hybernation or Suspend-To-Disk " ? Is the startup install process different for a notbook pc and will the "expert vga=2 " option work or correct this?

Please let me know as soon as possible. And, thank you for taking the time to read this.

I have a Dell 3800 and i have no prob with itIS it one of the newer dell laptop?

If your laptop is fairly new then your version of Linux may not be able to run a GUI. I tried to install RedHat 7.3 on my laptop but it didn't take. 8.0 works fine though! You may want to check out the linux laptop sites, I think they are www.linux-laptops.net and www.linux-laptops.org, to see what versions of Linux are supported on your laptop.