i am having problems dual booting my mandrake 10 with windows xp i just reformated my xp the other day with 40gb hd and i made one partition 18 gb for xp the other 18 gb for linux and the rest for swap file ?
so i insterted the disk and rebooted it came up with the screen : press f1 for more options and enter for intallation so i hit enter and it goes though the first part of the set up says installing and then screen goes black says kill somthing and resarts?????????
can someone help ????? as i am new at this and very confused??????

THANX!

Could you give more info about where exactly it deviates from a normal install? What do you mean by the first part of installing?

after it says loading program into memory
it goes to a black screen and it looks like this


sending temination signals...done
sending kill signals...done
unmounting filesystems...
/stage1/proc/bus/usb
/tmp/image
/stage1/proc
/stage1


and then it restarts and does it over and over till i stop it!

i dont get any of thoes screenshots you provided in the link it doesnot go that far!
???????

1) how did you partition your hard drive? If you don't recognize any of the screenshots, then that's not good. The Mandrake installation has a partition tool built into it. It's graphical and easy to use.

2) Linux actually needs 3 partitions: "/", "swap", "/home"

It sounds like you are booting from the Mandrake CD 1 and you are having trouble booting from the CD, am I correct?

q#1 i used windows when i reformatted to create 3 partitions one for windows one for linux and one for swap file ????

Quote"It sounds like you are booting from the Mandrake CD 1 and you are having trouble booting from the CD, am I correct?" yes that is xactly correct ?
i was told it was very easy to use thats why i was so frusterated!!!

thanx ???? for the support............

any ideas ????????

I would suggest downloading an md5sum program into your Windoze and check the md5sum of your Mandrake cd #1 against the md5checksum provided for the disk you downloaded. You can find it at the where ever you downloaded your disks from. As Micro420 pointed out your first problem is booting from your cd. If you have a broadband connection I would consider just downloading a new iso and checking the md5 at that time.

Also, Windows does not allow for formatting linux partitions, so when you have a working disk, when you get to the partitioning part you will have to reformat the partitions meant for Linux with proper file system such as ext3. Good link Proud gave you. Read through the screenshots so you know what you are in for. It is actually easier in my opinion than a windows install, much faster too. Also as Micro420 said you need three partitions. You could install /home in the / directory, but it is preferable to have it on its own. That way if disaster struck and you trashed your / partition (the operating system) then you could reinstall it without touching your home directory and not lose your settings and saved files. Although, I have not managed to trash a system bad enough in the last couple of years that someone in this forum couldn't walk me through fixing it without a reinstall.

Hope that has been of some help.

thanx well mabey im more of a newbie than i thought md5checksum????i didnt use news g
and i didnt reformat upon windows install !
i created partition and left it ?????
help for hopeless???????!!!!!???????

md5 is not linux specific. I used it in Windows a ways back.
here is one of many Windows gui's for it:
http://www.toast442.org/md5/

or for windows command line:
http://www.pc-tools.net/files/win32/...e/md5sms10.zip

and if you created partitions for linux in windows and left them unformatted, that is fine. TheMandrake installer would pick up on that and ask you if you would like to format and install mandrake in the empty partitions. Once you get a working install cd that is.

lets start from scratch:

Go into your BIOS
Boot from CD, NOT from your hard drive
Insert Mandrake CD1
Press ENTER to install Mandrake

You should see something like this:
http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/install101.html

does this work for windows xp ??? that i have ?

You can dual boot. So after you install Mandrake, you will have the option of booting into Windows OR Linux.

ok but i CANNOT INSTALL mandrake thats the problem i cannot get past the black screen!?????
after it installs program into memory????

before anything else i have to be able to install!
????????????????// witch is the prob?????