Installation blues- Mandrake 9.1 on HP ZE4325us Laptop

Hi, all-

I am attempting to install Mandrake 9.1 on my laptop, and am having some
difficulties. I first tried upgrading from 8.2, but this did not work
out and Mandrake Support informed me that they do not support upgrades
from non-sequential versions (i.e., you can upgrade to 9.1 only from
9.0.) . So now I am trying to do the deed as a fresh install, sparing my
home directory. The install appears to go ok, but on reboot, the system
hangs at "starting PCMCIA." I have attempted to circumvent this by using
Interactive Startup, but when I enter the "I" and get the prompt for
Y,N, or C, the system hangs again and I have to reboot. If I try to use
Rescue, when I get the Rescue flash screen, the system hangs and I have
to reboot. Passing the nopcmcia command to the kernel at the start of
the install does nothing.

How can I get this installed? I have probably run the install 10 - 15
times now, trying various options.

Lee Einer