OK, so finally installed redhat last night and got it going (kinda) but I think I've trashed some stuff on the way.

Problem: 64meg pentium2 with 2 hdrives

drive 1 = 6gig windows 98 install
drive 2 = 1gig formatted and where i wanted Linux installed

When I got to partition the disks I had real problems with redhats install routine. the only way i could get the thing to work was (inadvertently) creating the native linux partition on drive 1 (hda1) and the swap on drive 2 (hdc1) where I had actually wanted everything in the first place.

Now that the partitions have been created, I think that i may have formatted part of my windows system in the process (because win won't boot when boot disk isn't in A).

Question: How can i check my windows install. System won't boot "can't find initial partition" (is it looking for linux or win when no boot disk is inserted)? - can i change the Native partition to the other drive at this late stage? - should I have changed the harddisk order or something? I'm lost

Should I uninstall and start again with fresh coffee, and if so how?

any advice appreciated

Thanks

looks like ur in a real mess.

first of all did u format the partition when creating the native partition. if so cheeze ur on cannded camera.
hope u did not have anything really important on the 98 partition.
to confirm this use a dos/95/98/Me bootable floopy to access the c drive & check if the contents are visible. if not u need to start all over from strach as there is no way to undo the changes to the partition table. if u intend to using the 1 gb partition as the native drive i suggest u do with a bare installation.

Hmmmm, thanks for your reply. I think you've confirmed my worst fears. I've stuffed it by formatting the original partition.

What gets me is that the redhat install didn't appear to give me a choice. I was trying to get it to clean install on the 1gb drive (separate drive, not just separate partition!) but it insisted that the primary had to be on the first drive it found.... grrrr.

Never mind. Start again, wiser and keener

Rich

nightfly, welcome!

To rescue Windows, not in your case. Boot to WinCD or floppy. Type

c:/windows/command/fdisk /mbr

You're back in business.

"install didn't appear to give me a choice" - choose expert next time. You'll see Disk Druid. Click /dev/hdb for 1gig drive 2. Click edit. Mount as /. Click format. Proceed to install. When asked if you really don't want swap, click yes. Then you'll have only one partition.

Ideally, with 64mb ram, you'd want 128mb swap and the rest of 1gig goes to ext2 Linux.

It should be possible to install into second hd (I use such configuration myself). Linux can boot from every drive... If you remember the error message you got?

Thanks chaps/chapesses,

Got it working now and had indeed wiped win of the drive but hey, at least I backed up to the laptop first

I even removed my first attempt and have reinstalled opting to use the entire machine as a linux box as my laptop has win and all important files anyway.

So far so good

Nice to read