Compare:
In other words, you have just confirmed what I have said THREE times before: your hardware bit is useless without a driver. I guess reading is an art in itself but I'm sure you'll learn it in school when you're old enough.

Only if you are unable to figure out how to put the interface in IDE mode using BIOS. If you can do that, then XP can use the Microsoft supplied IDE drivers. No extra driver needed.

Please read my posts.

Also, your personal attacks are not productive. I am a degreed engineer, employed full-time, working on several embedded Linux projects.

No, you are right, but then I didn't start this off by using an expression like "flaunting nonsense" or what was it again. Although English is not my native language, I speak it well enough to realize that it is not a very complimentary one. And neither are remarks of this nature:

Do you really imagine that pressing ESC or F2 on boot-up is a high art?

Whatever, I have to disagree with your last post. What good is an IDE driver to run in AHCI mode?I can tell you: it won't work. You really, really need an AHCI driver. And you know it:

And just to refresh your memory: I have shown that although there isn't any such driver available for XP(64) - as far as the ICH8 goes - a simple hack on the driver is all that it takes to make AHCI work. So what would be the conclusion? Mine is that the ICH8 does not have a hardware limitation that would prevent it from setting AHCI; it is a software matter exclusively.

So what are you getting at? Are you just arguing for the sake of the argument? I don't get it anymore.

Old fashioned advice is get Windows up first then install Linux, reason: Windows doesn't have grub & lilo to manage different OS's so unless you have separate HD's & tweak the BIOS to load from one or the other windows might make it impossible to get your Linux system back by overwriting the bootloader- apologies to more experienced users this is probably a bit simplistic!
I tried several systems before getting one to load GRUB- see General forum.

I used partitioner (Debian Etch) to reduce size of NTFS partition (containing windows) left the backup ntfs partition alone, made 2/3 of the disk an unused partition (for later experiments, you can always use blank space as you wish) then had the installer allocate the remaining 20gB for the new OS. I kept it small as it's quicker to format and erase data if something goes wrong, you can always increase.

You shouldn't need to delete Vista.

Hope that helps- Phil

Free at Last
 

Hi,
Finally I'm running windows and Linux just a shame its Vista and not XP.
It might take years before the software catches up to the same support levels provided for XP by developers. I'll guess I'll just have to wait, untill then I can entertain myself with Linux. I've picked up a couple of books and I'm learning already.

Installing A dual boot system ended up being easy once I had some familiarity.
The key is to partition your hard drive and create unallocated space whilst maintaing an NTFS partition for Windows to recognise and be able to install to.
I used the GParted live cd download, save to file then burned to cd and booting from this. Windows didn't like it though and went running for the installation disk! Maybe it would be better done using the windows disk manager that hides itself somewhere in a dark corner of the OS as others suggested.
Installing Linux after windows is running, is the way it worked for me to. Microsoft just doesn't want to play with other OS. The Linux installation disk eventually started to make sense and it now seems very straight forward.

Thankyou Everybody,
I couldn't have done it with out your help.
I'm of to do a bit of studying now.
So whats this BASH SHELL thingy all...

Paul