loading and hd install problems

My system finally decided to behave when I put a new drive in, and I rebooted just fine. But when I tried to partition the new drive, it gave me errors when trying to format the mount point for /var/ftp. It told me to restart, so I did, but a few things, including the X GUI, wouldn't load. It booted me straight to the prompt. I tried to repair the installation from the disks, but as the installer did when I first tried installing Mandrake, even text install mode wouldn't work. I finally managed to copy the files to disk, but I can't seem to reinstall even when using the hd.img file from the Mandrake cd. I even tried adding extra commands to my lilo.conf file:

image=/foo1/isolinux/alt0/vmlinuz
label=install_hd_iso
root=/dev/ram3
initrd=/boot/isolinux/alt0/all.rdz
ramdisk=128000
vga=791
append="expert"
read-only

This installation wouldn't load, so I tried booting from the disk again with text expert mode, but my system complained about making RAMdisks before hanging and putting this out:

exiting init -- giving hand to rescue
Kernel panic : VFS : Unable to mount root fs on 01:03

Could someone give me a hand on installing off the hard drive from a boot disk (created from the hd.img file)?

I just tried to install once again from the disk (this time with only the bigger of my two RAM chips), and it got further than before, but this time I got a new error:
error in exec of stage2 :-(
trying to execute '/usr/bin/runinstall2' from the installation volume,
the following fatal error occured
FATAL ERROR IN STAGE1: No such file or directory

I have no clue how that file magically disappears when I try to install from the disk. Any new ideas?