Do I partition first?

[peasea]

OK...  I'm trying to install Red Hat Linux 9 on a PC currently running WinME. I've currently got 14 GB free on my harddisk, 128MbRAM. I have Red Hat on CD ready and willing to go, but I can't boot it directly from the cds, I've made a boot floppy for it, but that's not working either..
Seems like at boot-up the comp isn't recognising the fact there's any disk's in the machine at all-floppy or cd drive!
Once windows is loaded I can see all the info on the red hat disk and the boot floppy I've made.
I've also noticed that I don't have any info in my Config.sys file-I realise it's not necessary with WinME, but I'm well stuck..
Do I need to partition the hard disk first, or just amend my autoexec.bat file to look in to my cd rom/floppy drive before loading windows?
Any help greatly appreciated..  THanx!!!
Peasea

[Addy]

1. Boot problem:
Enter your bios and look in the sub-menus for some entries called "1st Boot device", "Boot-up 1st device" or similiar (you'll recognize it when you see it). Make sure the system tries to boot from CD before trying to boot from a hard disk.

When Autoexec.bat is executed, it's too late: Windows has already been loaded (bootet) at that point.


2. Partitioning:
Are the 14 GB unpartitioned space or are they unused space on a partition?
In the first case, RH Linux will give you the possibility to partition it during setup.
In the second case, things get complicated and you will have to use a partitioning tool.