Ok. I installed Ferdora Core 2 (I think 2.5 or 2.6) on an 80 gb hard drive. I've added a partition, well two, for Linux, one root and one swap thats 2 x my RAM (512 mb SDRAM), and tried to set it up to dual boot. Each time I try to log into Windows it does a system restore and everything for some reason.
I have to reinstall Linux to get it to work, and when I do it doesn't seem to like me either (I think its the newbie behind the keyboard thats the problem there), but I cann't get into Linux w/o reinstalling it. Also, I was never prompted to make a boot disk, and don't know how to. So, help

Some system info that may be needed:
2.53 GHz Pentium 4
512 SDRAM
80 GB Hard Drive
Everything else in a HP Pavilion

Dear firefork,

The trick i use to avoid having to deal with configuring the bootloader (LILO or GRUB) after installing linux is to install windows first. During my windows install, i leave at least one unpartitioned portion of my hard disk. usually, for linux, you need at bare minimum 3-5Gb depending on what packages you install.

During the linux install, you HAVE to specify to the bootloader that you wish to boot either Windows of Linux. If i remember correctly, this is done before the selection of packages, after the hard disk configuration. Then, after that, just reboot, making sure to remove any disks from their drives and resetting the BIOS back to boot off the disk that the bootloader is installed on. I hoipe this helps. Any more questions, just send me an email.

I think you should boot to your FC distro CD, select rescue mode, let it find your installation, then let it mount it. Then , it will give you a prompt. Type and insert a floppy disk that has nothing inseide or files you're ready to destroy . After some whirring and clicking, you have a bootable floppy! Boot into it and it will boot into linux. After that, reinstall lilo (or grub) and see if it works.

This problem looks like a problem of ur bootloader, GRUB , when your windows xp checks for consistency it rewrites the MBR (master boot record) and wndows can't read ext3 (linux partition) hence u r unable to boot in to linux.
First of all try to reinstall GRUB( grand unified bootloader) at the time of installation select advance boot loader configuarion

Advanced Boot Loader Configuration
In Grub you can also determine where you want the boot loader to be installed. You may install the boot loader in one of two places:

The master boot record (MBR)
This is the recommended place to install a boot loader, unless the MBR already starts another operating system loader, such as System Commander. The MBR is a special area on your hard drive that is automatically loaded by your computer's BIOS, and is the earliest point at which the boot loader can take control of the boot process. If you install it in the MBR, when your machine boots, GRUB (or LILO) will present a boot prompt. You can then boot Red Hat Linux or any other operating system that you have configured the boot loader to boot.

The first sector of your boot partition
This is recommended if you are already using another boot loader on your system. In this case, your other boot loader will take control first. You can then configure that boot loader to start GRUB (or LILO), which will then boot Fedora.

On the other hand if you want to start installation from the scratch install in a sequence (1 window 2 Linux).
For more check this out

This HOWTO will tell you how to use the GRUB bootloader to turn your computer into a Windows + Linux dual boot machine, without affecting your current Linux installation.

Cheers