First Hello to the Org. I am Steve of Pompano, I have a amd 3400 running on an asus k8n board with drive c is a 120g, and recently drive d a 40 giz maxtor. I am NEW NEW NEW to linux. Rather than running the unbuntu live cd I wanted to install Linux to learn it and store packages. I installed from the live cd and now it's there I think, but I am unable to get it to boot, even though the bios recognizes the drive. I am so new to this I don't quite even know what I am looking for. What are Grub and Lilo? Are you supposed to be added after or before or what? I really like to run Linux, I have Knoppix 3.8 and the live DVD as well as unbuntu but I need to get to it.
Thanks for the knowledge.
steve of Pompano

Welcome to linux world, I would become the 1st person helping you. My msn id is tankimsim80hotmail.com, contact me if you stuck and need fast response.

drive c is a 120g, and recently drive d a 40 giz maxtor
Where your install linux partition? And how you install?
What are Grub and Lilo? Are you supposed to be added after or before or what?
Grub and lilo is the boot manager, it is hard to explain to beginer. Simply use grub enough will do the job.

From the Ubuntu liveCD, open a terminal session, and post the output from the following commands(that's a lower case ell on the fdisk command).
You can also do it from Knoppix, but I think you need to omit the "sudo".

Also,what happens when you boot the Windows disk c: ???. Do you see a menu, is it your normal boot.ini, something else, no boot at all, ???.

First Hi to kstan and syg00, well to answer in more details to your kind replys, when I reboot back to windows in drive C, its normal run through and XP is is at my command. I tried to type in the the command lines but nothing happened.
I can see the drive listed in the bios so as far as I can tell I know the drive in inside the case and connected as slave but I still have no idea on how to get Linux to run from it. I guess I will have to get partition magic and try to dual boot. As fas a printed material goes I picked up the Linux Cook Book but I have a lotta ground to cover before that makes sense. I will keep trying sooner or later something will go.
Steve

First of all, props for switching to Linux, I think you enjoy it, don't be discouraged by things like this, youll get it working soon enough, and it will be worth it.

You mentioned Lilo and grub. These are bootloaders. You said you used knoppix. Do you remeber the isolinux screen when it first boots? That is a bootloader. If your system has no bootloader, you cannot boot Linux (or any other OS).

Have you installed linux yet?
Your harddrive needs to be partitioned. Ubuntu probably does this for you. It divides your harddrive into two parts, one for windows, one for linux. The bootloader then lets you choose between them. Chances are Ubuntu sets up your bootloader and partitions automatically, assuming there is room on your drive, you may have to resize your windows parition. Good luck!

Did you swap the boot order (in the BIOS) to do any of this ???.
From Knoppix, open a terminal session (the terminal icon at the bottom), and enter "sudo fdisk -l" (sorry about that - it does need the "sudo"), and let's see the results.

can you give us the detail where u install the linux?
/dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, /dev/hdb1? where is your swap? and '/'?
For your information /dev/hda=1st hdd, /dev/hdb=2nd hdd.