after getting redhat 8 for $35 boxed, I attempt to install it dual booting with XP , which i KNOW can be done as i did it on my mates computer after putting a hammer into mine.

For his p3 500 with 256 ram and 10gb hdd, it install no worries after we used partition majic to remove 4 gig from the old partition.

I then went home and attempt to install on mine, exacly the same way i did on his (i have a p3800 with 384mb ram and Seagate 40gb 7200 hdd)

Now, i have never got past installing 308 mb on mine. it halts every time saying an error has occured due to bad package, image, and thingsl ike that. Then it just restarts so you can install again and get the same problem.

What i might see as the problem is this error message that appears on mine and not my mates.

Boot partition /boot may not meet booting constraints for your arcitechture. Creation of a boot sidk is highly recomended.

Now, what may cause this may be my hdd, its 40 gig clocked in at 38, due to 40gb hdd's needing you to do somthen to em to get full 40 gig, i have not done this.

Or it could be my CD not wanting to read the cd, now that means i am going to go get my mates dvd/cd reader and put it in my box and attempt an install with it.

That error message it the big problem here i think.

I used XP Prof initaly to install on a full 38gb partition then partition magic to chop 10gb into unpartitioned space for linux. Then in linux i chose automatic and use free space. this is when the error occured.

Please help me, its not fair

FYI an unformatted drive will have the full stated capacity or close to it...but when you format a drive then you will automatically lose a % of the space this is not an error on the part of anything and there is nothing to do about it, sometimes though there is a small kernel (7mb about) if you bought yoru hdd at a chain or retail store (best buy) this can be taken off after a long process involving Dr. dos (formatting/reformatting does not affect it)....its not worth it...it wont affect linux (as far as i know) but sometimes win xp can have problems wiht it, if you bought your computer as a full box most likely you wont have the kernel

I am having a situation while installing Red Hat 8.0. I have a Maxtor 40 gig UltraDMA drive. It is ATA133. I have it plugged into the standard IDE port of my Asus A7V333 motherboard.

When I get to the point where it usually does the formatting and ultimate install of the packages, I get an error dialog saying that it was unable to re-read the partition table. I tried using fdisk to do the partitioning, but when I hit w to write the partition table, I get an error 16: device or resource busy.

I have tried everything... new cables, making sure the cables are seated, etc. So, I picked up an old 1.7 gig IDE drive that I have and tried it. A very basic install went through without problems.

I have already done a full install of RH8 to a Seagate Barracuda 30 gig drive a few weeks ago. I had no problems with that install at all.

Is there a problem in the 2.4.18 kernel that comes with RH8 when trying to install to a 40 gig drive?

Test your RAM with for 5 - 10 mins

http://www.memtest86.com/

Remove one stick or RAM. Install. Failed. Swap it with another stick.

Clean the CD drive len.

Are both computers Pentium? AMD needs a parameter.

Remove USB drives and Raid.

Is PM compatible with XP and NTFS? Do it again. This time, make it an ext2 partition. Install Linux. Use Disk Druid. Click the ext2 block. Mount point /. Format.

You might have a bad cdrom drive - or at least, it might be out of alignment somewhat relative to the one that burned your cd's. I would try two things: 1) burn a copy of the cd's you have on a different machine and try those. 2) swap cdrom drives with some other machine temporarily (maybe your 'mate's) and see if it reads it alright then.

Good luck.

I shal go get my mates dvd rom, which we used to install it on his pc.

And i am bout to burn a copy of the cd just need a damn blank cd to do it.

that or I am using winXP on NTFS and not FAT32 which my friend is using. I guess i dont need extra security so Fat32 should be fine, just means i will do anouther 20min install of XP then Linux...

aye, it never ends.

thanks for your help, shal be back in an hour with the results.

nope..so fat32 dont work either

Is it anything to do with not being able to boot of the first 1024 cylanders of your hdd?

because both partition magic and disk droid both have errors todo with being able to boot.

I set up two dual boot systems here: both Win2k and SuSE 8.0 Linux. The first one did had Win2k on an entire drive. I booted off the SuSE cdrom and it wanted to cut Win2k down to 11G and partition the other 39G for Linux which I let it do. Then I booted off the Win2K cdrom and it went "Aack! There's other STUFF on here! What do I do?! Delete it or leave it alone?!" I told it to leave it alone and it installed into the partition left for it by the Linux loader. There was one thing it needed to do though - it "deactivated" the other partitions. Afterwards, I went to the Win2k disk tool and reactivated the Linux partitions and everything worked great. The default boot is Linux, and it has a menu item to boot Windows.

The other system had an existing SuSE Linux system on it and I added a second harddrive with an existing bootable Win2k system on it. I never could get these two to work together using either of their insall programs. I'm sure someone who knows how to hack boot loader scripts could do it, but I gave up and wiped them both off and repeated the steps as in the above paragraph.

I don't know how RH8 works, but I bet not much differently than SuSE 8. I don't know about XP, but my guess is it would work about the same as Win2k.

I know it can work well, i did it on my mates computer. No probs during or after install, damn him.

SO i am thinking its either my hdd or cdrom drive which i will investigate the cdrom with a different one.

I don't believe this will be giving you any problems. Most newer computers are able to boot from partitions above the 1024 cyl boundary. I have seen this message when installing RH8 and RH7.3 on 2 different systems and both boot just fine. I would disregard this message as you don't seem to be having problems booting but rather your problems are during install.

If you paid for the CD's then I would guess that they are good CD's, I think you are on the right track trying your mate's CD drive.

HTH
Jeremiah

yep, i am gunna buy another cdr/rw soon or just get my mates old 40 speed that he dont use.

Its farily old am pretty sure its just had enough. It took about 5 attemps before it decided to copy a winxp file properly, if it was ithe cdroms fault i am unsure.

Thanks for all your fault anyway, one day i shal have linux. now just the mater of beating myself for formating my backup drive, thus loosing all saved crap for XP

It's none of HD OR CDROM business ! Someone is right , I think maybe your RAM have some problems. Just exchange your RAM.
Second, All the new distributions use GRUB not LILO,so we can safely use the HD which is large than 40G. and the linux now can also exsist together with winXP.
I think maybe you should fdisk your HD at first( using the fdisk of win98), and change it to FAT32. then , install a new windows. After this, install the latest new edition of PartitionMagic8.0 .Create a new partition for Linux , choice EXT3.
We never encountered this "disaster" which you had. re-fdisk your HD, I think it maybe works properly!
If you can read Chinese, go to this site for more details:
http://www.linuxsir/bbs/
god bless you!