[newbie] Odd Problem

[Phillip L. Gillis]

Hey,   I did a reinstall of 7.1 since I wanted a "fresh" copy after my initial learning experiences. Anyway, I did a Development box custom install and everything seemed to be going good as usual ( I already knew all of my settings since I had just had an install going ) . .anyway after the installer loaded my selected packages - all 100% of them - it went to the section where it creates a floppy . .it failed in creating the floppy . .no matter what I did, it failed. So I cancelled the making of the floppy and it went to the bootloader section for Grub an Lilo . .last time I didn't really have to do anything here but keep the defaults and it flew like a charm . .this time, NOTHING would let it create the bootloader. It kept saying Lilo failed and would return to the same dialog box . over and over again.   It ultimately continued until I just rebooted from the boot floppy that came with the 7.1 purchase and tried again . .this failing process continued to happen about 3 more times. I started thinking maybe since I had an install a few hours earlier on the drive that maybe I should just bleem it then try to reinstall Linux. Did the previous install do something to the drive that is preventing a new install of Linux from happening properly? What should I do?   I used an install of Win2K to now partition and reformat the drive. I went ahead and installed Win2K just to test my theory and went back to Linux to install on a partition that Win2K made. This time, everything on the Linux installed went fine under a workstation / custom install except I couldn't get my NIC working ( this is what I originally did and it was silk ) . but I am sure I botched that up in the conf . .anyway . .I intend on going back and zapping the drive again because I don't want Win 2K on it and want the whole 15GB to learn Linux or I may do a multiboot, but my question really is did the first install of Linux do something to the drive that the second install would not clear up? My problem seemed with not being able to write the boot floppy and bombing on the Grub / Lilo went away after Windows reformatted the drive? Am I missing something . Linux is new to me but I need out of Win32 in a bad way . . any comments would be greatly appreciated.     Thanks,   Phil