grub not installing

[MICHAEL WEAVER]

One of the more experienced Linux people from one of the LUGs I attend tried 
to Dual Boot my system with Edgy and Windows XP as I think I have some 
speech games which won't work under Linux.
He brought a drive with him and tried to repartition it and he also 
installed some extra memory for me.
He tried to get Linux to boot after it had repartitioned the drive only for 
some reason he couldn't get grub to install even though he was doing the 
correct commands to get it working it still refused to boot. He has had to 
offer to help sort it out for me in February and suggested I try and get 
hold of a blank drive which I could use.
Why couldn't he get grub installed which was why it wouldn't boot into Edgy?
When someone else installed Edgy on my laptop they installed it no problem 
when using the Alternative CD although that wasn't a Dual Boot system unlike 
what was supposed to have happened on my desktop?