hey,

Environment:
-I have windows xp installed on a partition of my hard drive(with ntfs file system).
-I installed Linux on another partition of this hard drive (with ext3 file system).

Problem:
After installing the linux mandrake system on the second partition, before configuring the system settings, it had to reboot. It booted into my first partition(windows xp). I used boot magic to boot from the second drive(which i was in the process of installing linux on). The message that it gave me was "missing operating system."

1 Possible Solution:
- I was thinking that maybe i should just wipe linux out, and re install it. Except this time, instead of letting it boot into windows after the installation, i would use boot magic to boot into linux.

Will this solution work? If it does, is there a better solution because this seems like a longer solution. And im pretty sure linux has been installed, it just needs to be configured, so how would i go back to where i left off in my installtion?
someone help me. thanks

Hi,
The installation should not need to re-boot until after it has completed. It sounds as if something went wrong. You should re-install, part of which is the installation of a boot loader. There are two types of boot loader, GRUB and LILO. I cannot remember which is the default but I find that GRUB is much easier to work with and make alteration to when adding new kernels. However both will recognise the XP installation along with Linux and allow you to select which to boot.
Once you have done this ten you should be able to boot either OS without using using boot magic.

Try to reboot from CD and reinstall the Mandtrake. Uncheck everything except KDE (worked for me), and if it asks for CD2 answer you do not have it. You can add software from CD2 later. This way you get a small install with less possibilities for error that caused the reboot first time. After you finish the install, boot loader should be in place and then you can try to reinstall linux with more software selected, or add packages one by one.