Dual booting with Windows 8

[cullam3n]

So I'm trying to set up Windows 8 dual boot with Mageia 2 (a fork of Mandriva) on my laptop in my sig, a Zenbook, but it's not easy. Mageia 2 does not support the GRUB2 bootloader, so it's GRUB (legacy) only, or LILO.

Currently I have a 500GB hard drive, breakdown as follows:
Windows 8 - 186GB
Restore - 14GB
/boot - 12GB
/swap - 4GB
/home - 243GB

There is also a 24GB mSATA SSD, with 16GB as cache and 8GB for the Intel RST. Not 100% on that but I'm pretty sure.

The problem is that I can't boot into Mageia 2 at all. It installed just fine, but I can't boot into the OS. I've tried:

-Disabling Secure Boot in BIOS, and enabling CSM (compatibility software module). I don't think it will work without doing this step.

-Booting from my USB drive that I installed with.

• "Boot from hard drive" doesn't work, it just flashes and brings me back to the main menu.
• Reinstalling the bootloader from the installation
• Booting into Rescue Mode, where I can reinstall the GRUB bootloader which I've tried. I also tried going into console, chroot'ing into the /mnt and trying
  

  bootloader-config --action rebuild-initrds
  dracut -f -H #this rebuilds the initrd with compatibility for almost anything

• chroot'ing and then doing a directory listing of /boot reveals all the files are there, including the *.imgs, the vmlinuz files, and the grub directory with the menu.lst

-Using EasyBCD

• Any option I put here to boot from results in an error trying to boot with it.

-Using rEFInd

• This autodetects the Mageia 2 installation, but when I try to boot it says something like "unsupported format for vmlinuz-desktop." But even if I change the initrd file manually its the same error, so I don't know if it can't find it or if it's something else.
• I've tried to enter an entry manually in the refind.conf; it shows up in the boot screen but I can't get that to work either.

I'm kind of a linux noob, especially in the whole booting process of them. I have been exercising my Google-fu for sure.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[cullam3n]

Forgot to add: I really don't want to delete Windows 8 just yet. I'm thinking about just buying another hard drive and putting it on that.