I am trying to install Mandrake 9 on a Compaq Presario, which has Windows Me. I have a 9.3 GB HDD, partitioned as C(6.6 GB) and D(2.7 GB). I formatted the D partition and want to install Linux on it. The installation proceeds until the partitioning stage, when the installation tries to resize D:. I get a message saying that "partition failed". Should I have to resize the partition? Can I not use the whole partition for linux? Thanks for your help.

First off, I don't recomend trying to install mandrake on 2.7 gigs of space. But if you need to keed windoze on there, read on...

It would probably be more practical to manually partition the drive yourself. It is not hard at all, heres what you want to do:

Delete the "d" partition completely. Then create two new partitions - a swap partition about 120 mags big, and one main partition to fill up the rest of the space. Where prompted for the "mount point" of this partition, enter " / " (without the quotation marks). Be sure that you select "EXT3 or ReiserFS as the partition types for your "main" linux system. This shceme will maximize the size you have available on the small space your using, and is fine for a first time user just trying to get the hang of things.

Let me know if this helped