How to dual boot on a dell
 

I have finally finished downloading SUSE eval Linux. I am having trouble formatting my hard drive. I have a Dell Dimension 8400 with a 160GB SATA HDD.I have tried to format it using the FDISK, start up disk commands but all failed. For some odd reason it does not let me format it. I have also tried installing Linux but if failed when trying to shrink the windows partition.
1) Does anyone know how to format it??
2) How do I partition it and what format should it be??(I.e. VFAT, FAT 32 etc.)
3) How to dual boot
Thank you very much for your help btw sorry if the question does not make a lot of sense i'm new to this whole thing:)

First, you need to create empty space using something like partition magic---NOT the tools in the Linux installer.

OOPS--NO--FIRST backup important data.

Once you have empty space on the disk, then the Linux installer will set up the Linux partitions and install the boot loader--this will (should) include detecting the Windows installation and setting up a dula-boot menu.

Search on this forum for "Saikee"--the grand wizard of dual-boot. His sig has links to some good tutorials.

My main problem is formatting my SATA hard drive which I got with the PC. Windows was already installed on it. It just had to be restored. I’ve tried formatting it but it does not let me. I used the windows 98 startup disk and tried to delete the partition in FDISK but it did not work.
Does anyone know how to tackle this problem?

You are confusing "formatting" and "partitioning". Partitioning comes first.

During Linux installation, everything will be handled automatically--assuming that you start with empty (unpartitioned) space on the disk.

I am not familiar with Windows partitioning tools other than Partition Magic.

A brute-force method is to re-install Windows, and then Linux. When you install Windows, tell it to set up in a 15GByte partition--leaving the rest empty. The Linux installer will then give you instructions on partitioning the rest.

Give Linux a total of ~10GByte, and the leave the rest empty until everything else is working. Later, set up a FAT32 partition for data--shared between Linux and Windows.

I finally got it to dual boot.
Thank you for all your help!!

Cheers