Very wet behind the ears. I currently have WinME primary C: fat 32, an extended partition containing a D: drive fat 32 for Windows apps and data. I took the remaining unpartitioned free space in the Extended partition and created an ext2 partition and swap partition with Partition Magic. These are both formatted.

1/. I would like to install Mandrake and have it install in these partitions - they are 4 gig and 100mb. If I choose the regular install will it automatically use these partitions, or do I need to use the Expert install, and set it manually? I should also ask, will linux install in an Extended (logical) partition, or does it need to be primary?

2/. What do I need to do to ensure my Windows C and D drives remain unharmed, and be able to choose to boot Windows or Linux when I start the machine?

Thanks.

Phil.

When you install, you will tell the installer exactly which partitions you want to install on. It won't go anywhere you don't want it to....

btw, I would revert the ext2 and swap partitions back to free space, and let mandrake create it's own partitions. PM is notoriously buggy when it comes to linux filesystems, plus ext2 is way out of date. You should be using ext3 or reiserfs as a file system.

So if I were you, put the partitions you created back to free space, and let the mandy installer do the work.

linux can install on a logical partition no prob....

Phil,

good advice from bulliver. In addition, if you're using Mandrake 9.1, its version of the LILO bootloader doesn't seem to worry if it's not on the primary partition, nor that its placed higher than cylinder 1024. Mine is on a drive mounted on a plug-in PCI IDE card which is not the primary drive, and which has Windows partitions in the first half of its 80GB. So the bootloader is on the second 40GB partition; how flexible can you get? just thought I'd mention this in case you came across talk about a 1024 cylinder limit and worried unnecessarily.

Geoff.

Thanks for the responses Bulliver and Geoff. I will delete the ext2 and swap partitions and just leave freespace for Mandrake to use. Its 9.1 so I hope no Lilo problems. I assume the Regular install has an option to install in free space? Any other recommendations for a painless (I hope) install?

Phil

"I assume the Regular install has an option to install in free space?"

oh yeah...

unlike microsoft products that try to appropriate your entire computer, linux will only go where you want it.

Just start 'er up, and have fun. The installer is very user-friendly, and you should have no troubles figuring out what to do.