Hi
I have 70gb hard drive space and have installed Windows XP on 35gb of the partioned space.
I downloaded the iso version of Mandriva and burnt it on a cd, created two partitions with Acronis PartitionExpert out of the rest of the 35 gb on the hard drive, one of 15gb and called it Primary partition for linux ext2 install and the other partition as a logical partition for Swapping, this one is 1.5gb.
All this I did by reading from the internet about how to install linux as I am new to linux. Have altered my pc bios so that it reads from a cd-rom. Now I was all set to insert the Mandriva downloaded cd and hope it gets recognized, but it didnt. When it looked like the cd would get recognized(because the cd light was on), it just stopped on a dos prompt that said something about booting and than suddenly took me to Windows xp.
Am I doing anything I shouldnt or havent done yet? Please help.
Thanks for your time.
Anoop

check you cd to make sure you have burned it properly. open it up and inside you should seee mny files instead of just one file. ensure that it is bootable. there is uttorial on how to do this somewhere around here.

If you have your BIOS set to boot from CDROM sounds like you may have issue with the iso.

As far as partitioning, Mandriva does all that automatically (also has advanced mode). Suggest you create a FAT32 partition to read and write to from both OS's.
Once you get your MDV iso disk working, you could let MDV partition and use the 15 gb. If you installed the Wxp yourself I would recommend reinstalling (although not necessary):
1.Use Wxp to partition your HD into three sections. One, about 25gb NTFS for Wxp, then use Wxp part tool to create another part about 25gb FAT32. Then leave last part alone and MDV will automatically format and partition the last 20gb. It will set up a root partition, home partition and swap. Install LILO bootloader on the MBR of the Wxp partition and you will be able to boot into either OS. Reset BIOS to default settings.
good luck