I asked at CyberTechHelp, but that didn't help much.
h t t p : / / w w w . c y b e r t e c h h e l p . c o m / f o r u m s / s h o w t h r e a d . p h p ? p = 2 4 9 3 5 0

could u please give the url in a correct manner .

my browser isnot able to go to that
it will be helpfull if u paste ur problem from that forum right here


regards
gaurav

But it says I can't post links until my fifth post, so I had to do it this way. You just add put the letters together...

How about just quoting your post from the other forum?!

If you've backed absolutely everything up, here's one way you can go about this. I'm afraid it requires some initiative. I'm assuming you have just the one harddisk. And by the way, short of paying someone to install linux for you, there's no easier way. I can't guarantee this will work, but what do you expect for nothing?!

o Somewhere near the start of the XP install process it will ask where you want XP installed. It should allow you to delete any existing partitions and create a new 40GB primary partition. You might also want/be able to create a smaller 10GB partition which you will later format as fat32 in XP (this will make file transfer between XP and linux easier without actually running XP on fat32). Tell XP to install on to the 40GB partition.

o Once XP is properly installed, you can move on to the linux installation. During the installation you will be prompted to confirm partitioning options. It should suggest something sensible, like keep hda1 (the C: drive) as it is and 'mount' it as /windows/C or something. If it wants to delete hda2 (the 10GB partition), don't let it. If you're feeling adventurous, you may be able to get it to format it as fat32 and mount it as /windows/D (otherwise, do it later with XP disk management). You will need at least two more partitions: one for swap (size=2xRAM in MB), and another as root (/). Hopefully, it will organise that for you.

Best of luck. If you're serious about linux you will have to get used to the command line.

Thanks. I think I can do that. I printed it all out.
But there's one more thing. I've heard that Linux often deletes windows while installing. Is that true?

The Linux installation would only delete windows by your own action/inaction. In my experience, most new distros are kind to windows: they leave its partition untouched and create a 'mount point'* for the filesystem on that partition. Just don't let it delete/replace or format hda1. If you read all the on-screen stuff carefully, you'll be OK.

*The mount points in windows are C:, D:, E: etc. In linux, it's different: any directory can be a mount point. There's one big directory structure, with the outermost directory called 'root' and indicated by a forward slash '/'. All other directories (and hence mount points) are subdirectories of /. You can think of / as the linux C:, as that's where the filesystem on the main linux partition will be mounted (=linked to). One of the subdirectories of / is mnt (i.e. /mnt, or sometimes /media). In there you'll find directories like floppy (/mnt/floppy) and cdrom (/media/cdrom). Instead of accessing a floppy from A:, you'll go to /mnt/floppy. However, the filesystem on each floppy will usually need to be mounted (semi-)manually, depending on your distro. Windows makes the harddrive, the partition, the filesystem and the mount point all look like the same thing.

it is not that linux deletes windows
but there may be some problem with some bootloader configuration
but that too is more in windwos installations since it does not asks you to boot other OSes but linux does asks u to boot any other operating system from its bootloadr(lilo,grub)

regards

If you use a current issue of most any distro, you shouldn't have a problem with the boot loader. GRUB is very capable of dual-booting almost any configuration known to man. In my case, /hda1 is a 60 GB NTFS partition, and /hda2 is a 20 gig ext3 partition (including my swap partition). As long as you watch your fingers during the partition phase, you'll be okay and the bootloader will work just fine.

and se that u install ur bootloader on
/dev/hda
the MBR
of ur harddisk

and if something goes wrong we are here to help u out

regards
gaurav

/me is just a lame n00b...
I didn't understand much of what you said...
If you don't wanna waste more time on me, then I understand that.
Oh, and one more thing. Is it possible to run WinMX under wine?

It's just a matter of where the bootloader installs itself. It must go on the MBR (master boot record) of hda (your harddrive).

By the way, you've got two IDE ports, and (potentially) a master and a slave on each port.

IDE1: Master = hda; Slave = hdb
IDE2: Master = hdc; Slave = hdd

lykke til

i was telling u that when u r installing ur linux i asks whther to install grub on ur
/dev/hda
or
/dev/hda3 or /dev/hda4 (ur linux partiton)

so choose to install it on on ur MBR (/dev/hda)

regards
gaurav

But does WinMX work under wine, or any other Windoze emu for that matter?

Don't ask questions which you can find an answer to with a simple google search. You will only get ignored. Besides, I doubt many people here are into filesharing crap like WinMX.

Sorry.