Grub loading - Error 2

I guess most people's first post is to confess they're a newbie, have no idea what they're doing, and got stuck.
So why should I be different.

I've googled the problem, "Grub loading -Error 2", and chased round several sites, and tried several of the variations suggested on my hdd set up in bios, but so far to no avail.

I'm trying to instal 8.40/emc2 from a downloaded disk . I tried out the live CD while waiting for a larger hdd to arrive, and that worked fine, but I didn't try to install it (the old one was only 2Gb) .
The new set up is a Gigabyte GA-5AX board, AMD K-6/500, with 512Mb RAM,Ati video card, Seagate 20Gb hdd.
The hdd is currently set as "Normal" in the bios, and I've tried, after installing and getting stuck, to then change the boot up order from cd/hdd/A to hdd/cd/A, but no difference.
I've checked that the hdd is master, and the cdrom is slave.

I have been installing with the primary partition at 3000Mb, following a set of guidance notes on Softpedia web site, but looking at other "cries for help", I see several suggestions of making the primary partition much smaller.
Is this where I'm going wrong?

Thanks in advance,
John

Additional info.
I tried re installing with a 500Mb primary partition, following the suggestion mentioned above - no go.
As I was given a window that suggested I needed atleast 2000Mb, I tried 2002Mb.
Halfway through, the installation failed, so I'm back to the start, with no idea what to do next.

One curious thing - during the original setting up, on the "where are you" sequence, the world map shown to locate your time zone keeps scrolling non-stop, and impossible to hit a map location.
Used the drop down menu, but thought it a bit odd !
John

John

Cracked it

The bios showed two different "versions" of the hdd.
On the page that shows the primary/secondary master/slave info, I switched the hdd type to Normal, but on the Auto detect hdd page it showed the drive as LBA.
So I went back to the first page and changed the setting to LBA, and re booted.
Bigo.
I've no idea what all the above means, but I hope it may help someone else.
John

Thanks for the info.
Not being able to leave well enough alone, I can see the possibility of re-installing at a future date very likely.
John