Dear ones out here...
Hope someone can help
Tried for 11/2 days now to get linux (mdk 10 beta) and windows 2000 running.
Read some howtos on the dual boot subject
I low level-formatted, fdisk /mbr-ed, disabled bios anti-virus boot sector protection and activated the windows partition (hda1 in linux).
I tried with grub and lilo.
I first install w2k on the first partition of the master drive of the first on board-controller (8GB, hda1, Samsung SP6003) - everything ok.
I then install Mandrake, with 3 partitions (hda5: /boot, hda6: /, hdg2: /home)
hdg is another Samsung (SP4003) on a pci-ide-Controller, which shouldn't matter. I don't understand why mandrake leaves so much empty space in numbering (there's no hda2, hda3, hda4).
Anyway, after installing Grub to MBR resulted in no more being able to boot W2k, I tried to place it to the /boot-Partition on hda5 (I'm getting asked which disk my active directory should be - hda of course).
In that case the MBR of the drive should stay intact, I thought.
But I always messed up in getting "error loading operation system".
But also doing fdisk /mbr or fixboot and then fixmbr from the w2k installation cd console didn't change what I got: "error loading operation system".
Help!!! Deep Despair! There's not another day to waste.
& Thanks a lot-

BTW: The simple way of letting GRUB do the whole job from the MBR worked before this new install and works on my laptop with mdk 10 / w2k as well.

Hard drives can support only 4 primary partitions, so if you want to use more partitions, you will end up having only 3 primary partitions, with the 4th being used as an unlisted logical "shell" partition, in which all subsequent partitions are defined. It may be that you have Win2000 living in hda1, some unpartitioned space taking up hda2, your swap partition living in hda3, and the logical "shell" being hda4. Your /boot partition would then become hda5, and finally / becomes hda6. That's just a guess based on what you've described about your partition scheme. It would be very helpful if you could also indicate the size of each partition you've defined as well -- I am assuming that the total capacity for this drive is 60G.

Anyway, I don't know if you're planning to start completely over again, but here's what I'd suggest:

1. Backup any important data before doing anything else.

2. Do another "fdisk /mbr" and redefine your partitions before installing anything else. Assuming the primary disk is 60G total, maybe you could partition 10G for Windows, maybe 100Mg for /boot, maybe 256Mg for swap, and the rest for / I'd recommend only formatting the Windows partition for now.

3. Re-install Windows.

4. Assuming Windows is happy, you're ready to begin installing Linux. Put the Mandrake CD's in and start it up. At some point you will be asked which partitions you want to use for the installation, so assign swap, /boot, / and /home according to your partitioning scheme. This step should also ask whether the partition should be formatted too, obviously the answer would be Yes, using whichever option you prefer (I'd recommend ext3)

5. Once your partitions are formatted you should be able to proceed normally with the remainder of the installation. I'm not experienced with Mandrake, so I don't know the details of the install process, but pretty much every Linux distro I've seen follows the same basic approach.

6. Go with lilo instead of grub - that's just personal opinion, other people may disagree. In any case, when asked about lilo, you should be able to safely save it to the MBR. That's what I've always done, without trouble, although some people may likewise disagree that this is the optimal choice. All I can say is that it works for me. Anyway, at the conclusion of the install, reboot, and lilo should give you the choice of booting into either Windows or Linux.

Overall, it sounds to me like you are actually pretty close to getting this issue solved. Good luck with it. -- J.W.

hi california...

Thanks a lot for your suggestions!
I got it solved now by installing linux on another harddrive (on a additional pci-ide-controller, booted by the bios as SCSI), windows still on hda1.

The reason for hda5 etc. was that I didn't pay attention (guilty, as always:-()
to the partitioning process - with MDK, if you don't choose expert mode, it suggests additional partitions to be extended ones.

Maybe that made it worse. But I didn't know, linux cannot boot from a extended partition as far as the bootloader is in the mbr. It's like that?

Anyway, I found someone on a german mandrake forum reporting the same problem, that does not appear in MDK 9.2. We were both using the newly issued 10 Beta 1 (a little risky for a newbie like me).

Best wishes...