Alright, I don't learn... I installed Red Hat 8 a year ago and was so happy, i mean abnormally happy. Anyways, i got so confused and fed up with not being able to simply comprehend it that i trashed it and reinstalled Win98...

Recently, i've wanted it back in the worst way, to try to figure it out again, now that i have a little more free time. So i asked around and my friend told me about Fedora, and now knowing that it was possible to use the Dual Boot technology, i started burning the ISOs...

I read all the documentation and thought i had a good handle on it, if i partition my C:\ space in windows into something like C:\ and D:\ i'll be able to install Linux overtop the free space on D:\ and use GRUB to dual boot... Piece of cake...

Then i downloaded some shady program and started fooling around with my partitions, big mistake... I restarted my computer and got the little blinking line of doom. Ouch.

So i screamed profanities and set my mind to installing Fedora no matter what, and thats what i'm doing now, 28 minutes to go. True, i lost all the information on my C:\ but its on my laptop and i backed up most of the important information...

But i did do one smart thing, i did partition the drive as follows:
hda1 --> /boot --> ext3
hda2 --> / --> ext3
hda2 --> --> swap
FREE SPACE!!!

I have an 11.5G hard drive and i allocated about 5Gs to Linux and left 6Gs free... Here's why (and my question)...

I want to be able to install Windows 98 over top Fedora into the Free space i reserved, and i also want to be able to alter the GRUB booter to recognize that i will be running two OSs and to prompt me, upon startup, concerning which one i would like to run. Is this possible? And if so, can you tell me how to do it? And make it pretty basic because i'm a 'ubernoob'...

Thanks! And i'll be back soon, as soon as i start messing around with Fedora i'll probably run into my old problems again, like 'mounting' my floppy drive so that Linux knows that my drives are interchangeable (I have a Dell Latitude CPx with a port designed to either my CD drive or my Floppy drive at any given time). Or, of course, the embarrassing truth that i don't know how to decompress .tar.gz or whatever the linux standard compression file is... That makes it hard to use programs or files after i download them... Really hard...

Thanks again! And please help, before i decide to toss the computer out the window...

Hello,

As I understand, re-installing winblows will overwrite your MBR (Master Boot Record) and Linux will no longer boot, as grub will no longer be there.

I don't know if there is any way around this, but hopefully this will get your post back on top and somebody who knows better than my newbie self will be able to chime in and help.

If you haven't gotten too far into your fedora install (by the way, good choice in my opinion as I started with fedora core 1 and LOVE it, and I am a TOTAL newbie), you could always install winblows first, and then fedora after, and use grub ( I hear it is easier than lilo) as your bootloader. I did this with a dual boot fedora/XP system, with little or no problems at all.

The main point is, winblows overwrites your MBR, which tells the computer how and from where to boot. Of course, winblows would never think to detect linux and give you any dual-boot options, so your linux will go bye-bye. This MIGHT be repairable by simply re-installing grub, but I do not know and this could be a daunting task for the newbie...

Anyways, will somebody else please confirm/deny my assertions?

Good luck, and dump winblows as soon as you are comfortable with linux!

I just wrote out a long message, and it was erased upon submission...

Damn it...



Anyways, i was pretty much saying that i would only need Windows to run a program like Cool Edit Pro 2 or Reason 2.5 or something like that. I record my bands from a four-channel analog mixer right into my line-in and right into Cool Edit. I would just need to find a program that was able to multi-track wavforms for .mp3 or .wav mixdown, but i dont know where i would start looking...

As for the Windows reinstall, i dont know how to partition the drive when installing Windows to allow enough space for Linux to be installed also. Would i do something before i initially install Windows? Or after, when i have the drive set up, would i partition the C:\ to be smaller and create a D:\ of the remaining space, then when i run linux, just point it to the D:\?

Unfortunately i dont know how to partition hard drives...

See i dont want windows on my laptop, i just want a good recording program... Any suggestions?

Curt

Curt - hopefully you've made some headway by now. From experience, I can tell you that if you want a dual boot with windows, it is always easier to have windows installed first, then install linux last no matter which linux you use. If you need to re-install windows from scratch, then you need a windows boot floppy disk with the fdisk and format commands on it. Use fdisk to repartition your hard drive, delete any existing partitions, then create a new primary partition using about half of the available drive space, then format that partition, then install windows on it. Then boot to your fedora disk and install fedora on the existing free space. One thing you need to understand is that free space is unpartitioned space, not just space on your partition thats empty. It's space that doesn't even show up in windows. You do not need to create a second D drive in windows for linux to use.

Mike