I get the same kernal panic problem no matter which kernal I try to boot into (basically, I can't get a working LinuxOS going, whether it's "Linux", "Linux2.4" or "Linux2.6". The initrd thing may be something, because I get the following message when I try to run mkfs.ext3:

mkfs.ext3: Device size reported to be zero. Invalid partition specified, or
partition table wasn't reread after funning fdisk, due to
a modified partition being busy and in use. You may need to reboot
to re-read your partition table.
When I try mkfs.reiserfs, I get this:

reiserfs_create: can not create that small (0 blocks) filesystem
When I try to mount hda3, I get the same message that I got when I tried to mount WinXP, mainly
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/hda3
As for editing (or deleting) initrd, I can't get to it because I can't mount the drive..

Should I simply start all over again with my partitions (i.e., go back into WindowsXP and use PartitionMagic, delete all partitions, and start again)? I must have tried to install this thing more than 15 times now, and it's getting really frustrating.