hello everyone,

i am new to linux, but very keen on learning
my problem is that i can't create the necessary partitions on my hd.

what i'm trying to do is dual boot, or maybe better, triple boot i've already got vista and xp on my main drive and it's working fine(as far as windows "works"). my hd is 250GB and has two primary partitions, where vista and xp lives plus it's got more than 60GB unallocated space. i made it after installation with program called "acronis" for linux

but now, when i boot slackware 12.1 installation disk, use fdisk and pass my disk /dev/hda, first message i get is: "you won't be able to write to the partition table". an other strange thing is that it recognizes only 4GB of my hd and it doesn't recognize the already existing partition table

maybe my assumption, that i can't create partition, is wrong, but i have a hunch that if go ahead and create new partitions it will wipe out my drive leaving me only with the linux partitions i created

any help would be much appreciated

p.s. english is not my first language. i apologize for any mistakes

I would try to boot with gparted live CD and check the partitions
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

thanx for the quick reply

i've already downloaded it and will try in a minute and will be back with the results

i failed to mention that my machine is advent 5302. here you can find the spec: http://www.uktsupport.co.uk/advent/laptop/5302.htm

ok,

so I booted up the gparted and it showed no partition 232GB unallocated

it's an interesting number, because when i bought this laptop it had vista preinstalled and 232GB was the main partition which I could access as my C:, also it had a 1.4GB System partition, which was also accessible from windows. furthermore, it had 9GB hidden partition where all the vista installation was placed.

but since then, i destroyed all of them and created other two with the vista and xp installation.

where do i go from here?

edit: maybe i should rephrase my question - is there a way to install linux without wiping everything of?

You used this acronis software for creating the linux partition ?
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...titioning.html
I don't know it, but from what I read it supports ext2, ext3 and reiserfs for linux filesystem, so should be ok...

Now, I read your laptop specs and see it has a SATA drive, so you could try boot slackware install CD and issue fdisk /dev/sda (not hda), see if it works

Maybe try add the kernel boot option: hda=noprobe, when the installer prompts about kernel parameters

keefaz, you are a genius. i used fdisk /dev/sda and it worked. probably /dev/hda was my dvd-rom i was looking at.

just to answer your question, i used "acronis" not for creating linux partition, but for resizing egzisting ones and making some unallocated space on my drive, since i wasn't planing on having linux back then when i was installing win

now i'm having a different problem - linux it self won't boot up, but that is unrelated to this issue, so i'll make a new thread

anyway, i would like to thank you very much