Lets see, where do I start here?
<< yeah ive never heard of people having problems with supported wireless chipsets.
besides, what errors are u getting? a lot of them should be trivial mislocated modules, which is easy to correct. as long as you can boot into single user system, we can walk u through fixing everything. if u rolled your own kernel, what options did u select? >>
Brand new install of Mandrake 8.2 from a format
<< is mandrake using a new journaling file system? ext3 support needs to be patched into the default kernel (what kernel version are u using), reiserfs should be in the latest bare kernels, XFS needs sgi's patches, and JFS needs ibm's patches (i suspect, ive never used jfs, xfs is great for me). if youre trying to boot mandrake using a kernel without support for your filesystem, youre in trouble. >>
Yes, xfs3 is installed as the default filesystem.
<< what boot loader are u using? if lilo, did u reference the old/original kernel? try booting that. if u can get to singlue user mode with the original kernel, everything is fine except the new kernel you compile. >>
definitely LILO. I'm not sure what you mean about referencing the old kernel.
<< how did u compile your kernel? did u read the kernel howto? did u select all the modules u need? did u remember to compile the modules in addition to the kernel (make modules)? lastly, make absolutely certain the optimizations you select (i386 to i686) are correct. >>
I applied the patch and did the make/make install/whatever's after that. I kept everything what it was before except I changed one option that I was told to in the wireless HOWTO
<< first things first, check to see if u can get to single user mode on the new kernel. then try the old one. if u removed the old kernel or can no longer boot it, try mandrakes rescue utility, it should allow u to boot from the cd to your linux partition. >>
It's too late for that, I nuked the partition and I'm going to start over again probably later tonight.
<< and dont forget, dont ever go back to windows. >>
Thats the goal. We'll see how I'm able to do it.