what app should i use to make the partition?
which OS should i install first?windows ?or linux?
how can i configure the boot menu?

anyone can tell me what should i do?
such as
1,.....
2,.....
3,.....


thank you so much

You've got two options - use RH or Windows boot menu. Create Windows partition in any utility you have (fdisk, for example), leave free space for RedHat. Install Windows. Check if it boots - it shouldn't use boot manu. Then install Redhat. It will detect Windows, make sure it was added to boot menu. When you finish install, you should have RedHat boot menu and be able to boot both systems.

Don't know if this was what you had in mind, and I assume you only have 1 hard drive in your system, but here is how I was able to get a dual boot system of WinXP Home and RH9 onto my laptop.

1. Install WindowsXP Home. My laptop (a Dell Inspiron 600m) had the harddrive pre-imaged with WindowsXP as 1 partition taking up the whole hard drivesave for about 128MB for suspend storage. I know from experience that when installing Windows2K or WindowsXP, it will ask you where to install it and you can then so some re-partitioning if you wish.

2. Check that Windows works.

3. If Windows is taking up the entire harddrive, or more than you would like, you need to re-partition it. I used PowerQuest's PartitionMagic 7 (8 is available now). This is a commercial app that I happened to already have, so I used it. I think it retails for $40 or so. I re-sized my Windows partition to 1/2 the hard drive size (20GB from 40GB), and then moved that partition roughly 128MB in from the beginning of the hard drive.

The reason I moved the partition is because I wasn't sure if newer computers could boot from a partition that didn't start within the first couple of GB of a hard drive. I have had problems with this in the past. By leaving ~128MB, I would be sure that Linux could place its boot partition in the lower areas of the hard drive.

4. Install RH9. Please use their tool to check each of the installation CDs prior to installing them( it comes up prior to actually performing the install). From what I have read on this board, many an install has gone wrong because of faulty media.

5. Choose your install and go. RH9 will install the GRUB boot-loader for you, and automatically detect the Windows partition and add it to the list of boot choices. It will probably say DOS or something, but you have the options to change the label if you want. Note that you can change boot options later from Linux by editing the GRUB configuration files.

Hope this helps.

COOL
thank you,Mara and Plehman

I installed the windows 2003 server first ,then i installed the Red Hat 9.0.Everything seems going well

however....

i made the partition at first,so i can read the C: D: E: F: G: H:...in the windows after i installed it.You know,some partition is for linux.

after i installed the Linux,then i started with windows, of course,the E:,G:, H: (for example,where linux is on them) are gone

so i can't change the symbol of the partition in the future?
and one more thing
the windows starting will take a loooooooooooong time,i don't know why,cuz the linux partition?


anyone installed linux + windows 2003?

2003 generally take a while to boot. Did your later drive letters disappear? Personally, I dont like Windows to see my non-windows partitions. Windows always wants to format them, write a signature to them, etc. When i installed 2003 with rh9 i had no problems at all. Well, besides the fact that my sound driver was nonfunctional in 2003.

Good Luck

Windows tends to be unable to see Linux drives as they are non MS formatted drives.

You can share between them by having a fat32 partition and mounting it under Linux - you can then share data between them.

I dunno.. If you check disk management in windows...
Windows ALWAYS sees Linux partitions (at least in my experiences anyways), they just show up as unknown filesystem, which prompts windows to "take action" (format, recreate, write disk signatures, etc)

ya...i think so...

windows always sees the Linux partitions and want to take action
...it'll take a long time to see the desktop

my god

is there any way to fix it?
:S