I have been trying to install Linux with XP on three computers that all had one harddrive. My computer has two harddrives. Therefore I did not have the same problem. About the first ten times I tried to install a dual boot on those three computers, I was using Ubuntu 5.10. Every time I would install XP and leave free space for Linux. XP would work fine after this except it needed sound drivers(Ubuntu had my sound drivers). Then I installed Ubuntu, and used when the partitioning tool came up, I used the option "use the largest amount of continuous free space". After that, Ubuntu worked fine, but when I tried to load Windows, this message came up in black and white:

Windows could not start because thed following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows root>\system32\hal.dll
Please reinstall a copy of the above file.

I want to make a full Linux system on these computers, but their owners are new to Linux and are not ready to have full Linux systems yet. I thought that this problem was a problem with the new Ubuntu 5.10 untill today when I tried to install Debian with the same method. Ubuntu uses the Debian installer, so I followed the same procedure and the same problem happened. The computer I've been working with the most has a 120 GB hdd with a nvidia vanta 6 video card, but I don't think the problem is the harddware because I have the same problem on each computer. Has this problem ever been reported before? What is causing it? What can be done to solve this problem?

Hello!

Why don't you try to use an option where you can specifically select the partition to install Linux. Perhaps first try a smaller dist. like VectorLinux and see if that works ok.

Also,try did you restart XP before installing Linux? Sometimes it looks like XP installed correctly, only to realize afterwords it does not restart.

later,
Murdock