There must be some kind of hardware imcompatibility. Do you have a PCMCIA wireless card? I couldn't install Linux for a long time before I finally understood how to setup my wireless card. Try some other distributions for newbies (Mandrake, Lycoris). Download Knoppix, a distribution that runs directly from a CD-ROM. Gentoo, if you are a power user (my favorite distribution now), the Gentoo forums are excellent for support. Don't get stuck in Red Hat.