Try Morphix or Knoppix. Both are cd based distros that will allow you to test them on your laptop before committing to HD. If they find and configure your hardware satisfactorily, then use the built in installers to install to HD.
 
More here...

any suggestions of how to fix the current mandrake version?

Neus, I'm afraid I wouldn't be the one who could tell you as I had a lot of trouble with Mdk 9.2 which is the sole reason I switched to Red Hat 9. Mdk 9.0 was a great release, but 9.1 and 9.2 gave me all kinds of problems that started with it giving me the same trouble it seems to be giving you. I couldn't get it to find a screen and had to run xf86config for the first time in my life, and still had problems after that. In the end, I decided it wasn't worth it. I know others here like Mdk 9.1 and 9.2 so I will defer to them to help you there..
 
Morphix is a really great distro! Just tonight it saved my ass as a rescue cd because I screwed around with my /boot/grub/grub.conf file! I dropped the Morphix cd into the beverage tray, mounted hda5 and fixed it in a matter of minutes! I had nothing else because my RH 9 install cd 1, which I could have used for rescue, got hosed somehow. Had it not been for that Morphix cd, I probably would be contemplating a re-install right about now... :x

would u suggest me trying red hat linux 9 too? cause ive already got their iso files downloaded, all i gotta do is burn em onto disks... but i dont wanna try it agian, cause then i gotta reinstall windows yet again if i screw up... that would just turn me into :x :x having to do that twice in one day....

I personally love RH 9 and use it on my home machine. It is a really good and capable distro, plus you can add apt-get rpm which makes adding and configuring packages almost effortless. If putting RH on a laptop though, you might want to drop back to RH 8 as I understand 8 is better when configuring laptop wireless. There is little difference between 8 and 9 otherwise so I would go with 8 for the added configure abilities. You can also have apt-get rpm with 8 as well. Hate that for you about Windows! I really do think a download and trial of Morphix could save you a lot of time..

Ive been looking round for a bit, and I cant seem to find a version 8 of rh.. i only found v.7 and 9. As for Morphix... i dont really fully understand it... all that running off cd??? what? exuse me if i sound like a noob to that, but i am... could you expain Morphix a bit?
 
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Nm... found a v 8 rh.. problem is its 5 FREGIN DISKS... gah.. and the server i found it on only allows 1 connection at a time.. (download time: 23 hours... and slowly droping bit more n more)

Are you using dialup or the NIC ?

i dont use the dial up.. i use the home network

 
I am now a proud and happy user of Mandrake 9.2... so far ive met no problems, configured everything and it went fine... i got the problem fixed using the www.linuxiso.org forums...

That's great news! Whatever works! Google is your best Linux friend! Whatever problem you have, you can almost always count on finding someone else who encountered and found an answer to the same problem.
Yes, Morphix runs entirely from cd. After what I went through last night I would reccommend everyone have a copy on hand, if just as a resue cd. We run Morphix-Gnome 4.1 on my wife's laptop too and love it!
Although you have Mdk 9.2 working, you don't have to download all the RH 8 cd's just the first three. You can get them here...