I desparately need help. Pls help me out.

I installed Red Hat Linux 7.1 3-4 times on my 40 GB. hard disk along iwth other OS- win ME, win NT4 and Win 2000. But, I am not being able to start the system with LInux.

I created a 1.9 GB, 16 bits primary partition with DOS fdisk and installed WIn ME on it.

Then , started the system with Linux bootable CD, created partitions with Linux Fdisk as:

50 MB primary partition for Linux boot partition

Assigned rest of the space to extended partition, converted the partition type to win 95 extended.

created 512 MB Linux swap partition- logical type in extended space

Created 2 GB Linux native partition.

Installed Linux with option install LILO in 1st sector of root partition.

Rebooted the system with win ME, installed win NT in a new logical partition. Restarted the system with win NT 4 . Ran Bootpart.exe utility to load Linux boot loader in bootlinx.bin. Edited the boot.ini file with path of bootlinx.bin.

Again restarted teh system n installed win 2000 in a different logical partition.

But, when I tried to boot the system with Linux, after loading few modules it asked for Linux boot disk. But, even after inserting the disk it could not boot.

Previously, I followed the same procedure to install on 20 GB disk with 16 MB boot partition and 128 MB swap partition and successfully did it.

Pls somebody help me out .

Thanx in advance.......

If I remember correctly, RH 7.1 is one of the versions which cannot boot from above 1024 cylinder (the location of /boot partition must be before it). In your case, it should work when you create partitions with the following order:
1) Linux /boot (primary or extended)
2) Windows ME (I'm not sure if it doesn't require a primary partition,but if it works from logical for you, then OK)
3) Windows 2000
4) Linux swap+Linux main

You should consider using newer version - if you'd like to keep 7.x, 7.3 is a better choice (and it doesn't have the limit).

Edit; I've just moved the thread to Linux-Distribution forum. Member Intro is not a good place to ask questions. It's a place to introduce yourself. Please post questions to the other forums.

Thanx Mara for ur prompt reply and advice.

But, still I am doubtful as I did it the same way earlier successfully as I have described, on 20 GB hard disk . But, on 40 GB hard disk it is creatig problems. Even, I am using the same installer CDs that I used previously. This time I have just changed the size of Linux boot partition as 50 MB in place of 16 MB.

Could somebody pls help me out???????

Simran