i had so many problems trying to install linux, and now i know how, exept my only problem is partitioning, when im in linux it cant do a automatic partition, and if i go manual, it will format my whole ntfs hard drive, with my windows xp running on it. So i went to partition magic 8 which i downloaded, but when i make a partition with partition magic and it asks me to restart to save changes, the computer boots, and it says something about partition magic really quick before it boots, but when i get into windows there is no new partitions, and when i run partition magic again it doesn't see any partitions either? HELP! been working for 3 days trying to get linux to run on my laptop!

well, id just backup, partition with the linux partitioner fdisk or disk druid, install windows, and then install linux. Partition magic screwed up my whole harddrive when i tried to resize the windows partition.

reinstalling windows isn't really what i want to do, but if thats whats gotto be done ill do it, but if anyones got different alternatives TELL ME! cuz im gunna redo the whole system at 4:30 if i cant get any other ideas

well, if you can get partition magic to resize your windows partition...have at it. But it is a time consuming process(as is reinstalling windows). make sure to run defrag first, because it will move all of the data to the front of the drive, and when you set up your partitions in partition magic(a great program, dont get me wrong ) make sure your windows partition is first. That should speed things up a bit. NTFS in partition magic was a little sketchy for me. Like I said it froze up when it was halfway through resizing, and It ruined that partition, but I was only using version 7.0. Its really up to you man. Good luck with linux .

Oh, and another thing...What kind of laptop are you using, I know some of them have some funky hardware/bios settings, and that may be your problem.

i just got a new hp pavilion ze4365us and so far ive been having alot of problems, but im not gunna give up until i have linux on this dam thing.

Yes...it is kinda hard to get it up and running, but it will be worth your while, trust me . What distro are you gonna put on there by the way?

im putting redhat 9, and like i said i want it too bad to just throw it away and jeep using a crappy windows xp

Yes, thats what I got....I tried redhat 7.3 a while back, and i got so frustrated trying to get it to work that I just gave up. I just got redhat 9, and it took me 3 days to figure out how to get my video to work, but now that I have it, I boot into it more than I do windows. Im still a "newbie", but im coming around. It just takes a while to get used to, thats all. Well, I hope you can get partition magic to work....tell me how it goes .

well looks like im gunna just have to redo my whole comp, which sux, but i rather do that then not have linux at all!

Well, if you are going to dual boot, make sure you install windows first....its really stubborn and selfish about having a primary active partition, so installing it first will eliminate problems down the road.

so? do i have to run the linux installation cd? and then go to the partitioning client they got in there? then partition the whole harddrive to linux? or something? or how do i make seperate partitions for linux and windows?

Hopefully you got it going but if you didn't here is the run down on what I did with a similar set up. I had win xp on a 70 gig partition, for some reason when I partition into the native partition that partition magic 8 supports it would not let me, so what I did is I completely deleted a 10 gig space with nothing on it, when I ran the installation Linux disk, it automatically partitions the free space this is on Mandrake Im sure Red hat is similar, after I was done, bingo there iit is a beautiful Linux machine. Another thing I recommend is to have some FAT32 space because Linux can read and write on that, to where it only reads NTFS, I dont know if it does it on the new kernel.

Good Luck