my pc has three Hard drives, one one drive I have XP 32bit and another drive I have windows 7, on my third drive I have my portable applications plus other files . I want to add linux but since windows 7 is installed what am I looking at, is there going to be any issues like boot problems.

what I want to do is add the core files ( not exactly sure if that is what they are called) to the same hard drive as xp then the other files to my third hard drive. as it is when I boot into xp and look at the drive names it say that XP is on C: and win7 is on E:, but when I boot into win 7 it says that Windows 7 is on C: and xp is on D:. this confuses me an is why I am a little concerned about installing Linux because of possible boot problems.

Hi,

I would use a LiveCD such as 'KNOPPIX' or 'SystemRescueCD' to boot your system. Then from the 'cli' do a 'fdisk -l', please post that. You may need to rearrange or re-size to allow installation. Both of the above have the tools necessary to accommodate you with tools.

Look at 'Tools, Recovery, Diagnostic, Emergency' to select other tools.

You could do a search here on LQ since this has been covered before.

The above links and others are available from 'Slackware-Links'. More than just Slackware® links!

You can easily create some free space on your hard drive for Linux. I'd recommend using Gparted to open up space, and you can mount different directories across different drive. Like Onebuck said, this has been covered, I actually replied to something very similar not even 12 hours ago.

thanks people will check those out