so i have this computer that has windows vista home premium on it. i cannot afford to buy another O/S or else i would get XP for this task. i need to install Fedora and i got a 100GB HDD for the class (it is a linux admin class) and currently it has nothing installed on it. i was told by someone that it if i want to dual-boot then i need to have the O/S's on the same drive. i have one more install of Vista Black 64-bit which i can put on the drive.

i know that i need to make partitions for each element of fedora, such as /, /home and swap. am i going to have any problems installing fedora? also, i have to install it from a download. i don't have a disc drive i can burn an ISO with.

First which version of Fedora are you going to install ?
To dual boot must the OS on the same drive ?
There is different between installing the OS and installing GRUB
If you can not boot from the second HD than GRUB should on the HD that can boot while the rest is installed on the other drive.
You stated you do not have a disk drive but, that you can burn a iso .
So you are planning bto burn it else where ?

they dont need to be on the same drive (its usually easier if they are not on the same drive).

have you considered fedora live-usb ?

i have fedora 11, sorry. i put it on a thumbdrive to boot from FDD but it say BOOTMGR error thing. do i need to burn it to a disc? also, i mean HDD when i say 'disk' and CD/DVD drive when i say 'disc'. i have a DVD drive now, though. mia culpa. and when i say i have fedora 11 i mean that i have the Live Image. i cannot find how to install it directly from the ISO because i can't get the windows autorun to come up.

essentially, what do i do with the fedora ISO i have? how do i make it start installing?

well,you have to use some boot media,e.g USB Flash Drive(making it bootable), burn the Fedora ISO to the Flash and than boot from that, For this Why not try unetbootin-windows-248.exe ? I find this program very helpfull in making different types of installation "cd`s" on a usb disk Works fine with all iso, img files that I have tried (a lot)
You can find the file on
http://launchpad.net/unetbootin/+download
Just start program, add ISO file you want to "burn" to usb disk, and it just works !

There are couple of easy ways to boot from iso image that you have. Either you can burn the image on an optical media like cd or dvd or you can use it to boot from usb thumb drive.

While using optical media just remember to select "Burn Image to disk" or similar option. That will make cd or dvd bootable. Then you can select the first boot device from BIOS to be your dvd drive and boot from cd /dvd.

Else you can download Unetbootin from sourceforge and use it to make your usb thumb drive bootable. Either way you can use it, upto you to how you can do that.

i typed in 'fedora live usb' into google and this was the first link:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora...ndows_or_Linux

i think you need to understand that the live image does not install on your computer. instead it runs live without making any modifications to your pc (windows autorun would have nothing to do with linux).
you can however install it to your pc (and duel boot if you wish) by running the 'install to hard disk drive' link on your fedora desktop.

these are general instructions:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...06/page2.html?
season to taste.

i may be half-retarded but i really didn't understand what was going on in that link. essentially i want to know how to install this:

ftp://ftp.uci.edu/mirrors/fedora/lin...-i686-Live.iso

i have installed many things sans-cd but this ISO has the most roundabout way of installing. now that i have read some of the answers posted i am not even sure if it installs fedora 11. i tried putting the unetbootin on a thumbdrive but it says that there is no bootmgr... i have no frickin' idea what i am doing anymore. can anyone tell me how to install fedora from where i sit? i really need it done within 24 hrs.

you keep using the word 'install' which i think is confusing you:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_CD

to create a live-usb:
i dont know what about the fedora wiki link that is so confusing for you but i will paste the 2 simple steps here in case you missed them:

to create a live-cd:
- are you using windows now ?
- you seem to already have the live iso downloaded on your hardrive.
- you need to burn the downloaded iso to a cd (i'm not sure what burning software you're using --each one has different menus and options-- but make sure you are burning it as an iso-- may also be called a backup, image...
if the finished cd has 1 file in it that ends in *.iso you did it wrong; it should have many files and directories on it.).
from the puppy wiki: http://puppylinux.org/wikka/LiveDVD
- reboot the computer and enter the bios (each computer manufacturer has a different way to do this -- sometimes esc, f10, f12, ctrl-s, del, ...) and make sure the pc will boot from the cdrom or usb first. save and restart with the cd in the drive.

not sure if will help, but i do is burn iso to a disk. now i take partion software an d make a partion indepentent of win . this must have enough space for fedora some 20 g will work. then run install disk you made in that partion . follow dir

thanks all. i am not sure why it was so difficult but i couldn't get a burnt CD or DVD to run the Live disc and i couldn't get the bootable thumbrive to work either. i redownloaded it and burnt it to a disc again and now it works.

@schneidz:

i know what a Live image is -- a bootable CD-ROM -- but on the particular ISO i downloaded it also had the option of installing fedora. i am not sure if that is unique to open source linux or not but i knew for a fact that an installation option was available in the O/S. once i got the thing to boot it was a breeze to install. i just didn't know why it wasn't booting. i thought maybe it was something to do with having it as an image instead of on a disc. i also didn't know it wasn't bootable straight from the ISO, which is how i usually install ISO software. but i got it now! again, thanks.

2 possible reasons, maybe you burned the cd wrong (wrote it as a single file instead of an iso9660 image).

or sometimes because iso images are so big they sometimes get corrupt. (most distros have a method to check the md5checksum to make sure it is a valid iso image.)
http://fedoraproject.org/en/verify

fedora's verify steps seem to be cumbersome. i would've just burned another cd like you did.