PARTITION WORKSTATION 'N' STUFF

Got the latest version of Redhat on Friday and updated both my laptop and workstation. 'Twas easy. Back to putting Linux on another workstation as a dual boot system. I couldn't get Redhat to automatically configure with windows on the primary partition so I had to start with a new partition table. I've made the VFAT partition around 4500 mb, the Swap partition at 300 MB and / the rest, so I hope that is cool. I'm running blind as far as keeping the original Windows 98 OS on this machine, but hell, why not live dangerously. The Windows partition is the front sector and has been scandisked and defragged so many times its not true.
So it's 40 minutes until I find out if it's still on there. Whoops it just told me of a missing file or corrupt package for open office. Seems to be hanging, asking me to try again without any success, tried giving the disc a clean, tried changing the discs over to older ones. Worked perfectly ok on the update. It's reading the disc - The lights are on but no ones at home. We're just going around in circles. I have another strategy, maybe install Fedora 2 and then update to 3 or work out how to do a network install. Nope no luck for the fifth time. I'm dumpin' this install and starting again.