I made the mistake of installing windows 2000 with NTFS instead of Fat32. Now I went back to install Redhat 9 on the second partition. I quickly realized that NTFS was on there and I don't feel like reinstalling and formatting. Is there a way to use a floppy disk as a boot loader for Redhat and have Redhat install on the second partition of the harddrive? Or can I buy a program (Partition Magic?) that will let me copy my info, format with fat32 and then copy my info back to the drive?

yes there is a way check the image's on the 1st cd of redhat and read the readme file there ull know what image u need inorder to boot from floppy u can use the rawutil (from windows) or dd(from linux) to write them into floppy,2nd option u can install grub or lilo.goodluck

I am lost. I think I have another problem first. I remember seeing that option before. I insert the cd, boot up, and enter the setup, selcet languages, mouse, etc. The problem occurs when I get the partition page. I select Auto/Manual (doesn't matter) and then tell it to use the free space to install Linux.
An error message pops up: Could not allocate requested Partitions:
Partitioning Failed: Could not allocate partitions as primary partitions.

Thats as far as I can get in the install. Never even get a chance to select lilo or grub.

A bit of information about the drive. I am trying to install Linux on the second partition of this harddrive on a POS Toshitba I aquired. This high quality laptop has a busted screen that randomly turns off whenever it feels like it. The idea is to install Linux and access the comp via ssh and X11 over a network.

Okay, I don't understand it completely, but let me try to take a stab at it.

You had 1 NTFS partition (First of all, I'm not even sure you can install Win2k on FAT32, I know XP has to be on NTFS for its primary partition). Then you used a program to split the partition into two. What you should do is delete the partition that you're going to use for Linux, then run the install scripts from there. They should see the free space, and then you can format it to ReiserFS, Ext3, Ext2, or whatever floats your boat.

ok check this.

Buy partition magic. Install it.

Resize your partition for windows to small, just a couple gigs more than the total size.

Make a fat 32 partition for data in which you need for both.

Make a linux ext3 and linux swap partitions.

Do the install and install tothe ext3 and do not use the st00pid druid


But wait wait wait wait wait.

You say you have two partitions and both are ntfs but one is empty and you wish to make it ext3?

Are you SURE its empty and a second partition, AKA NOT a part of windows?

In that case, go to the manual partitioning things with the druid and DELETE the second partition.



And if it is just one partition, still use the manual partitioner, but use the 'Edit' part to change the size of the ntfs partition.

Then make the linux ext3 (label it as /) and then make a linux swap (no label needed). The swap should be around 2x your ram.

I do not think the auto-druid will resize your ntfs partitions for you.