My desktop has been linux-less for several months due to a hard drive failure; Only recently, I've been able to afford to replace the hard drive, and while I was at it, I upgraded the motherboard, CPU, and RAM.

Now I can't get Linux to install at all. If I try to install using my old Red Hat 7.1 discs, it will actually start installing packages, and then it will shut itself down with a read/write error (NOT a Kernel panic). If I try to install using RH7.2 (download edition), it won't even create the partition; Even if I try to create the minimum 250 MB partition (on a disk with 7.8 GB of unpartitioned space), it says that it's over 1024 cylinders and refuses to continue.

Motherboard: MSI Socket A
RAM: 256 MB DDR
CPU: Duron 950
/dev/hda: Running Win98 on 3 partitions
/dev/hdb1: Running Win2k
/dev/hdb5: Linux Swap
/dev/hdb6: (where I try to install RedHat)
CDROMs:
/dev/hdc: Samsung CD-RW (which I install from)
/dev/hdd: Sony DVD-ROM
eth0: D-Link 10/100 Ethernet
Onboard Sound: Disabled in the BIOS

I had a lot of problems initially trying to install an OS where another had been. Windows likes to set cylinders as 1024, Linux 7.2 as 5096.


1) Make sure your drive is "cable select" or "master"
2) Using FDisk, enter the expert menu, and set the number of cylinders to 1024.
3) Ensure your DOS partition is set as FAT32

With that setup, you should be able to set a dual-boot in GRUB.

Also note, than you can only set 4 partitions per hdd. With windows using 4 partitions already, linux won't know what to do.

I recommend using dual-disks, but it is possible to set each windows OS to a single partition, and then set logical partitions for the Win Swap partitions.