Hi,
I'm looking to duel boot with mandrake 9.1 and windows xp. I will be reformatting my hard drive after I burn the ISO's for the free distribution of mandrake on to disk.

My question is, how will I need to partition my hard drive so it can boot to either xp or mandrake? What program is used to do that, and are there and free ones?

And is there any order I should install the OS's in? For example XP first and then Mandrake or visa versa?

Any help is appreciated.

Thank you,
Bohh

WIndows Requires Only One Partition. Linux I'd Recommend Three as a Minimum. Boot, Root (/) and Swap.

Boot about 50 - 100Mb, and Swap about half your RAM, say 256Mb Max.

And Split the rest 50/50 Between XP and / .

Install XP first and then install Linux, Use The Bootlaoder that suits you best (Grub or LILO). They'll both boot Linux or WIndows for you, and they both usually come on the Linux Disks. Normally the Installation of Linux sets up this for you.

Install XP 1st making sure you leave some unpartitioned free space at the end of your drive for Mandrake.

Install Mandrake 2nd - choose the option to keep existing partitions and install in the free space - ie your instructing the installer to leave your XP partitions alone and install MAndrake into the free space - with an automatic install like this you dont have to worry about partitioning in advance etc - good for a new Linux user - Disk druid in the installer will deal with automatically creating the neccesary partitions and formatting filesysyetms etc.

Install LILO to the MBR.

Thanks for the speedy replies!

Much appreciated.

One thing, I noticed you said disk druid will set up partitions for me. Is there a web site or something telling me how I can do it manually?

Also you said leave some space at the end of my partition after install xp? How Do I make sure that it leaves some room? I'm using a 40 gig HD with fat32 right now. I'm assuming I'll have to split that up into 3 or 4 pieces.

[added] also do you think mandrake is a decent linux to start with compared to say, redhat?

Thank you,
Bohh

Ok, I was able to Dual Boot both XP and Mandrake, but here is some word of advice to people doing it for the first time. If you have a big hard disk, quite possibly, it uses the NTFS Format. Bad thing. Cause it's real hard to find a nice program to partition NTFS. Mandrake's DiskDrake will do it, but sometimes it won't be able to salvage the data. Therefore, it's good to do it while your hard disk is fresh, meaning that not much data has been passed through it. Luckily it worked for me in my new dell. But then again, i hadn't installed anything in the Windows partition besides the basic OS Stuff.

So, today's lesson is: Try using diskdrake before formating, it works sometimes.

Hi all,
I am new to the forum and came here seeking help, Hopefully i will make my installation work so i can become a regular Linux user!

Ok here is the deal... Been strugling with Debian and RedHAt 9, first trying to install in Conectix Virtual PC enviroment ( I use Windows so this is the PC version ). No Luck there... i figured that the Installer was having problems with the Virtual Hardware wich is diferent from what i have... so, i am trying now to make my system dual boot....

I have 2 hard dirves... lest call it A and B, B is slave to A in an IDE chain. A is 80GB and has Windows XP Pro installed formatted as NTFS, B is 40GB unformatted

I need a FAT16 partition in B so i can use it as a shared data drive.

I havent decided yet if i need to download Mandrake, so far i have downloaded the 7 Debian Disks and the 3 RedAHt versions, I think i have around my hard drive still Slackware.

All i need is a little help with clear instructions on the steps to take for installing on the second hard drive and being able to Boot betwen the 2 without damaging my main installation...

Pleas bear with me.... Former MAc user forced to work on Windows and trying to escape M$ grip by escaping to linux