This is a partition problem and not a Linux problem. Putting Mandriva '10 on D:. Windows 7 is on C: which is obviously what I want booted with Linux. OpenSuse's partitioner is what created all of this mess a while back. Never had any problems with Mandrake's in the past. The E: is my prized share drive. Also, is it okay to go ahead and delete F:? It seems to be a cloned drive of E:. Says most of it is used but there's 0 items in it. It just scares the crap out of me considering E: is the one drive I can't have anything happen to.

The screenshots tell it all. Windows Disk Management tells me I can't format D:. I've got ideas why, with the bios/D: being the system partition and all. Would changing D: to primary fix this? What does anyone recommend me do here? I only have dial up in this area so doing over and reinstalling Win7 is not an option considering I've re-downloaded DirectX, etc for my Win7 partition again.

Here is 4th screenshot not in attachments:

http://i47.tinypic.com/2m6s5kn.jpg

Attached Thumbnails

     

Windows uses a partition setup similar to the BSDs in respect that it is a logical set of partitions within a slice.
I suggest you mount the computer with a livecd and use fdisk -l from the command line to see what the actual partition table looks like. The logical partitions cause trouble installing and you will need to resize the partitions with both ntfs resize and the gparted or qtparted resizing tools.

Another thing is that you cannot format an active partition while you are using it.
D is active if you can readily access from anywhere on windows while you are using it.

Use "fdisk -l" to see what partitions are on the drives. You can boot up with a live distro, or press [CTRL][ALT]F2 to reach a shell during the installation. It would be better to actually mount these disks, and look inside yourself, to make sure they aren't important.

The first partition looks like it has a lot of data in it. You will want to examine what is in there before deleting it to install Mandriva.
The smaller gap after the last partition may actually be a swap partition that your windows tools don't recognize.

In Linux, the drive will be /dev/sda, and the partitions will be /dev/sda1, /dev/sda2, ...
There are no C: or D: drives in Linux. Actually, there aren't in windows either, and the drive letter sometimes even change after partitioning. If you read the hidden BOOT.INI file, you can see how drives are actually referenced in Windows. "multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(1)". I prefer /dev/sda1 myself.

Thanks a ton for replying. What would taking active off of D: do? Could I format then? If I did format D:, do you think the bios would boot into Windows 7 (C the way these are so ridiculously set up right now?

Just to clarify, you do know that I'm putting Linux on D: right? I was probably confusing when I said booting C: with Linux. I meant dual-booting.

Thanks fellas. I'll get you the table. I have an OpenSuse LiveCD laying around here somewhere.

jschiwal, I've went through C: quite a bit moving anything I need to E:. Most that is taking up space are things I've already copied and large games.

Table is exactly as above. sda1 through sda5

sda1(D: Vista which is where I want Mandriva) has an asterisk under boot.

So no Linux partitions that were left over. Do any of you know why E: was cloned or whatever? F: just showed up there out of nowhere one day, and out of fear (and ignorance) of keeping E: safe, I just left it as is.

Show us the complete output from the fdisk -l.

start / end / blocks / id

(ntfs) sda1 (boot *) - 40 / 3827791 / 99.5gb / 7

(fat32) sda 2 - 3827797 / 6029629 / 57.2gb / c

(fat32) sda 3 - 6834967 / 8083378 / 30.9gb / c

(extended) sda 4 - 8083456 / 11046831 / 77gb / f

(ntfs) sda 5 - 8083456 / 11046831 / 77gb / 7


here is another screenshot: http://i48.tinypic.com/m7dmc9.jpg

Okay, all is well here except one thing. my C: is now a primary partition which is very good. I can't set it active now because the bios is still trying to boot from D: and it will not recognize the MBR. Is this because the MBR is on D: and it's trying to boot into C:? Or is it because D: is still set at the system partition under bios... would just setting C: back to active and hitting recovery from the Windows 7 disc fix that?

You will need a primary partition and at least one logical partition to boot. This is for Linux.
Once it is installed, you can configure grub to boot whichever partition you want first.
You're limited to four primary partitions.

160 gb hardisk how to partion in mandriva