which should i do im having a partinon prob in suse i posted thred on it in this section "so close!"

anyway would it be wise of me to install linux first then to wondows?

i want to dule boot

If you want to dual boot, the best way to do it is to follow three steps.

1) Partition the harddrive with Linux in mind (I.E Give Windows Half of the harddrive, and leave the rest unpartitioned or to partition the last have as 2 or 3 drives, depending on whether you want your home directories on a seperate partition)
2) Install Windows to the first half of the harddrive (or however much you delegated to Windows)
3) Install Linux to the latter half of the drive

and to avoid headaches, Windows should only be installed on the first primary partition of the drive.

do i partion my drives druing the first step with windows or linux..?

Well, i would go with Linux, but that's just because Linux can create a Linux filesystem and Windows will only allow you to create Fat32 and NTFS filesystems. so boot with the Linux installer, partition the drives, reboot, install windows, and then install Linux. Hope that makes sense, if not - post back

Partition the drive in half through windows. then install windows on that first half--the second half should show as free space which is where you'll put suse and then use the suse install to partition that second half for your swap / and everything else.
It's just that windows is no good at recognising other OS's when it is installed second unlike the intelligent linux....

ok im stuck now..i got 2 good posts 1 tellin me windows 1 tellin me linux..ah! well im really new to partitioning drives which would be the easyest for me...and also could ya kinda walk me though it...see i had windows installed on my comp and i downloaded suse today went to install it and got this

no source found at 'CD;///devices=/dev/hda,/dev/hdd

so i said..hey i just got suse ill just reinstall everything so hear is my question

by the way i figured the error was beacuse of the partition correct me if im wrong

I agree. Windows MUST go first. windows will ignore any other OSes on the system and must be installed first to avaiod manually rewritting the MBR. Also linux will get you a bootloader so that you can pick your OS at boot.

Well said, tamoneya--especially about the bootloader option. Or check out Gag--it rocks. http://gag.sourceforge.net/

ok second question when i set up windows what do i hjave to do..beacuse the first tiem i installed windows i just installed my partition and there was a bunch of left over space(at the time i was thinking enough for duel boot) i have a 130 gig hd...so space isnt much of an issue..i just need to know what to do when i get to the partition screen in windows set up...also i tried again reinstalling suse both in regular mode and in safe and got this error
no source found at 'CD;///devices=/dev/hda,/dev/hdd

i just dont understand where im going wrong!

well when installing windows it should bring up some type of partitioning tool and ask which partition you want to install on. What i would do is clear all of the old partitions and then use the partitioning tool to divide the hard drive in half and select the first half for windows. Then it should install itself there.
about the SUSE problem did you check the md5sum beofre burning also maybe you just had a error in the burning process. check you iso with md5 and then reburn the SUSE disk.

thanks tamoneya!

but..md5sum im not quite sure what that is..ive only had a little experience with ubuntu...im preaty new to linux..how do i check?

md5sum checks if the iso file is correct. When you downloaded the iso you probably also saw a file with and extension of md5. It is basically just a text file with a sting of numbers and letters. and if you apply a function to the iso file it should generate that string if the iso is correct. i would recommend this to create your sums.

i scanded it with that md5 app..everything came up green..

okay so now that we are sure you have a good iso file reburn your disc at a low speed to prevent any errors as best we can then try booting from the new disc and maybe the error will go away.

Is this a desktop machine?

If so, then save yourself a lot of trouble: install a second disk-drive. Put Windows on one drive; Linux on the other.

To start with, you can use the BIOS Setup-screen to choose either one of these as your "boot-device." In time, you can configure either the Grub or the LILO boot-loaders to load Windows.

The key point is simply this: with this (very cheap) configuration, you have the complete flexibility that is offered when "Windows can completely ignore Linux, and Linux can completely ignore Windows." You can install Linux, play with it to your heart's content, and do it all without making the slightest change to your Windows installation.

On my main systems, I actually have three drives. They're cheap enough, and you can always find something to do with the space.

Also don't overlook the possibility that many systems can boot from USB 2.0 external disk-drives (or FireWire, if you have it). Those devices (which are downward-compatible with USB 1.1) are very close to just-as-fast as a built-in drive.

Disk drives are, frankly, dirt-cheap now. Nearly every motherboard has two IDE-interfaces: drop-in cards are also dirt-cheap and may well out-perform the motherboard. Make it easy on yourself and take full advantage of these things!