boot up misery!!!

[davemc28]

hi there...I have winXP on the system and 2HD..a 20Gig and a 4.3Gig.the 20 is partitioned into 4...I installed mandrake 8.1...and selected the "use free space option" with Drake....but when I attempted to boot the system I got "verifying DMI pool data"....I have soooo much info on the XP OS....please dont tell me I've lost everything!!!!...can someone guide me??!!I've noticed that the 20gig is not being recognised in the bios....I cannot see how installing linux could have done this....kind regards..Dave. :confused:

[slapNUT]

Has the system worked with 2 hard drives or did you just install the second?

How are the hard drives partitioned and what partition is linux and XP installed on?
Are the hard drives ide? If ide are they both on the same ribbon cable? If so is one setup as Master and the other as Slave?

Try going into BIOS Setup and doing an autodetect of the hard drives. If it doesn't work then power down and remove one of the drives and try again. See if you can narrow it down to a drive.