Newbie seeking answers.

First I'm running an out of date livecd at the moment, (3.7 I believe) I have 2 80 gig hard drives hooked up to a superP6DBE motherboard with 4 128 mb sim. I picked up this server unit and recycled it instead of going out and buying a new computer/ software/ operating system. I wanted to try and use a linux operating system. I have used a bittorrent to download Slackware on 1 hd, I had a working Ubuntu 8.04 and Windows XP on the other until my motherboard quit remembering where my drives were. Apperntly this copy of Knoppix has a problem with freeing up some drive space to allow me to upgrade to a newer version Qpart won't repartion either one of my hd's. I was able to change my root password once but not anymore. About the only thing I can do is surf the web and that's not what I want to do all the time. So I guess what I'm asking is how can I get the software I have running again. I don't have to have windows working. The hard drives came out of my HP Pavilion the serves only had 4 scsi 9.3 gig hard drives and the cable connectors were broke. What I have seen of some of the Linux sytems like so far.