I boot from the CD using manual install, go through making the partitions, then cfdisk wont allow me to quit.

I was able to use alt-f6 to go to a Knoppix login:

I tried root, no pass nothing...

I have two partitions in one drive. One is windows xp (ntfs). the other I have root (1.5 GB), swap (512 MB), linux ( 38 GB)

I don't want to screw up and install on top of my windows partition...what should I do?

can anyone help me?

You can kill the partitions with the partition program to get the space back but I am not sure why it is locking up though. Also, to ensure that you don't damage your xp partition, figure out on which ide channel it is on. Aka, which drive. If it is C:\, your xp partition SHOULD be hda. The first ide master is hda, your first ide slave is hdb, second ide master is hdc, and your last second slave is hdd. In theory. I am pretty new to the art of linux but I am pretty sure about that.

I don't know your level of proficiency, so sorry if I'm talking down to you, but you didn't give any details about what you've tried. Did you write the partition table and confirm that there were no errors? Also, you might need to reboot and get the system to reread the partition table in some cases I think. Additionally, did you change the label on the swap partition to make sure it's 82 (Linux Swap) and not 83 (Linux)?

If you've done all that and successfully written the table, when you go to the login prompt and get to a shell, you need to "format" each partition (mkfs and mkswap respectively). You should really read the Pamphlet of KnoppMyth specifically http://www.mysettopbox.tv/doc.html#manualinstall for manual installations.

Also, if this doesn't help, in the future make sure you give more details about what you've tried so far, and use the search function in the forums to see if other people have had the same problems and have fixed them before asking any questions. Good luck.