Normally I find the answers I'm looking for without having to post. I did find about seven threads that were "almost there" but not quite.

In any case I am a newb and am trying to install Fedora 11 (from the live CD) onto a computer with an existing Windows XP Home installation).

Things to consider:
- Computer belongs to my nephew (don' want to mess it up) :-)
- I am slaving a new 80 Gig drive onto the computer.
- I would like Fedora 11 to be on that new 80 Gig drive.

Can this be done without having to do some weird partition resizing grub lilo super geek thing (and not destroy the existing WinXP install?

Tall order perhaps?

Unless you manually error something while partitioning, it should all be ok and you should be able to dual boot without much issue.
Just be careful while partitioning. Thats it.

The other thing to watch for is setting up the boot manager. In order to boot two or more systems, the Frdora install will give you the opportunity to install either Grub or Lilo. These are boot managers. Given a choice, select Grub. It is more flexible, and I think a little easier to administer. It has to get written to the MBR ( master boot record ) on the primary disk, where your windoze install is. It will replace the windoze MBR.

The install should detect the windoze install, and the new install of linux on another disk, and set it up so you can boot either. If this part gets messed up, then you may not be able to boot windoze later. If that should happen, it is fixable, without any windoze re-install. I have two dual boot systems, one with XP homely edition and Slackware. The other is a W98 system, and two Mandirva systems.

You will need to look for the option during the Fedora install, and select the correct option. I would suggest you look around the net for examples of how to do a Fedora install. There are ones for Mandriva, that show the options for installing the boot manager. The only reason not to look for Mnadriva, the installers are custom programs written for each distro. So the Fedora install will look different than a Mnadriva install. They do the same things, just look different.

Make sure you have backup of all user files on the XP system before you proceed. This is just in case you do the wrong thing.

As the previous poster suggested, you will have to partition the new disk. Just remember the drives in linux will be called 'HDA and HDB..." or "SDA SDB" not "C" and "D"... as in windoze speak. They will be HDA HDB if they are IDE drives; SDA and SDB for serial drives...

Thanks to both of you. I'll give this a go and comment back here so others can know how it went.

When I do this, 'if' something goes wrong, is there a "free" way to make a diskimage (bit by bit) of the original XP Home drive. I want to make sure I have "a way out" if something goes awry.

It might take a week or so get around to this. I have minor surgery being done today which will take me about a week I think before I recover and can be behind a desk again. I was hoping to get farther this past week. But again thanks and I'll try this as soon as I can :-)

I usually do not backup the system, or programs, since I have the originals to re-install if there is an unrecoverable error. I back up user data, that is what is most difficult to re-create.

There are bit for bit copy programs, but the problem will be where to store such a backup. They consume a lot of space.

The most common problems are the inability to boot to windoze, and that can be fixed. Just do not touch the partitioning on the original drive. Only partition and format the added drive, for linux. Beyond that, linux will not destroy any windoze stuff. You would have to go out of your way to do that.

Hope this helps.

Ok sorry it took me so long to reply back here.

Installation of Fedora went well but did have some partitioning hurtles to get through. My nephew decided it didn't want me to put an extra HD on his computer so I installed Linux on the primary hard drive which Windows was already on (which changed my approach).

I wanted to go "Linux all the way" so I tried Parted magic first. And despite repeated efforts (about five times) it never went through. I consulted several forums and the best answer that I was given had to do with their sometimes being a problem with the built-in defragmentation program for WinXP not doing a great job. So I installed PerfectDisk version 10 and still the same problem.

Lastly I gave a free windows product a try; EaseUS Partition Master Home Edition. And it did all of the partition moving that I wanted (including the active windows partition that I was running at the time WOW).

Once all of that was taken care of I was able to install Fedora 11 with no problems (Using GRUB) and boot to WinXP with no problem as well.

Ok, my next task (and I'll once again come back here to tell all how it goes) is to reinstall WinXP because there are some virus and malware issues (imagine that). After I do a fresh install I am going to try to install a few essential programs onto Windows and then try "Parted" again to do an image of the fresh image. This will be save time because the two teenagers using this computer like to make muck of the Windows installation every few months :-)

Thanks again to LinuxLover and Camorri.

You will need to take care that windows will install its own boot loader in mbr erasing grub. After you are done with xp installation, you will need to rescue grub. Thats easy and LQ has a lot of threads regarding that.

Good stuff. Glad you had success!

Success all the way now! Enjoyed the learning experience. After doing a new windows install I had no problem using the Clonezilla CD to boot from and then backup the new WinXP installation (which will save me several hours of time in the future).

And just to be sure that this solution would work, I made a few changes to my new WinXP installation and then restored from my backup. Viola'! everything was back as I had saved it and surfing was a breeze. I highly recommend this solution to anyone with a WinXP system.

Note: I made a fifteen Gig partition to hide the Clonezilla image in. And within WinXP I removed the drive letter so the partition would be hidden and no one would mess with it. :-)

Additional note: When I did the Grub restore it was mucked up so I tried to access the menu.1st file and was not able to do it.

Finally scoured over a couple dozen forums until I figured out the following steps.
1) Boot from a Linux boot CD
2) Open up terminal and do a "SU -" and put in the appropriate root pwd (if needed)
3) Type "gedit" which opens up a text editor with root priveleges.
4) Navigate to the menu.1st file and edit as needed.

* In my case I needed to take out two entries that were erroneous and repeats of what I already had. Then I had to change the drive that was referenced (in Grub) from hd1 to hd0

Thanks to everyone for the help.