critical error during ped_disk_new


I used qtparted on knoppix to make a partition that windows would understand, as I needed to install it to work with my phone. I went crazy and deleted (i thought) all the partitions to do this, hoping I could just do a clean install from my fedora core 3 dvd and fix everything. Does not work!! After I get the error message, my hda looks something like this:

01 - /dev/hda1 linux-swap 1004.03mb n/a 0.03mb 1004.06 mb
02 /dev/hda2 reiserfs *active* 73.54gb n/a 1004.06 74.52gb
03 /dev/hda3 unknow 7.84mb n/a 74.52gb 74.53gb
04 /dev/hda-1 free 2.49mb n/a 74.53gb 74.53gb

there is a pic of a penguin next to 01 and 02.

all I want to do is be able to boot windows 98 or fedora at startup. I formatted the disk using fdisk in windows, and was able to install, but I don't know which of these has it. How do I stop the above error so I can do a clean install of fedora, so that I can boot eith os at startup?

thank you all in advance!

joel b

What you might want to consider is starting over completely from scratch, then create 4 partitions: /dev/hda1 as a vfat partition (no bigger than 2GB, if I remember Win98 boot limitations correctly), /dev/hda2 as another vfat for Windows, /dev/hda3 as a Linux partition, and /dev/hda4 as a small Linux swap partition. After creating these, install your Windows system on the first partition. Then when that's done and you can boot to Windows, install Linux on the 2nd partition (and let it install the boot manager at the same time). I believe the important thing here is that your Windows boot partition be the first partition on the drive, and not be bigger than 2Gb.

Hope this helps.