first of, i have NEVER used linux and am completely new to it, so i apologise if i am sounding stupid! :) I am trying to install linux mandrake on my system, but i have a problem, i boot it with the boot disk to run setup and it stops with the quite common kernel panic, now, to solve this, many replies have said to press TAB at the LILO prompt and enter some line into lilo.conf - this i am fine with, but the problem is, even if i leep pressing tab all the way through, no lilo prompt is to be seen anywhere! I am installing this on a virtual machine created by VMware workstation (version 3.1.1 build 1790) - windows 98 worked fine on this but linux won't, have i got a problem that linux is not liking or is it VMware that messing it up? i have searched the floppy and CD for lilo, no sign of it..is there supposed to be? plz help, i wanna be using linux, as i have heard good things about it. cheers in advance. Dave

i created seperate virtual machines for each OS

me again :D, i am running XP Pro as the host OS. System Config is: AMD Duron 1Ghz 384Mb (3X128Mb) PC133 SDRAM Gigabyte GA-7IXE4 mobo NVidia TNT2 M64 Pro PCI graphics Seagate 40Gb HDD (with Western digital 20Gb slave) SounbBlaster PCI512 sound 3X 3Com EtherLink 10/100 PCI TX NIC (3C905B-TX) Cards