Mandrake9 installed but i cant install XP too

desrbd · 08-21-2003, 09:36 AM

Hello,

I have installed Mandrake9 on my comp, and now i want to install XP, but the problem is when i boot up using the XP cd it says it cant find any harddrives on the computer. I have one 30gb hd with mandrake on in (master) one slave 27gb and one secondary master 3gb (last 2 hds mentioned are empty)

Now - i cant find any good fdisk help page and i dont have any Mandrake cds atm. So what do i need to do?

fdisk & delete the mandrake9 install? So the XP cd will find the harddrives? And then later on install MDK9?

Mega Man X · 08-21-2003, 09:54 AM

The best is always to install Windows first. Windows, following the M$ style, wants to be always the only OS in a computer

.
If you don't have anything important in your system, rip it off and start over installing Windows first, in the first partition, then Linux. Mandrake has actually some pretty good tools for harddrive partitioning so it's gonna be cool after you install M$ Winslow first

.

desrbd · 08-21-2003, 09:57 AM

Thanks for the answer Megaman X, but do you think you could tell me how i can get the XP cd to find the harddrives?

Cause i just fdisk'd and deleted all harddrives, so know i cant install XP cause it cant find any hd's and i dont have any linux, except a KNOPPIX cd..

How do i get the XP cd to find a hd?

Mega Man X · 08-21-2003, 10:14 AM

Hmmmm, this is just a wild guess. I'm not even sure if this has to do something with it. It's just what I'd try to do in your case

.

1 - use fdisk (i have a win 98 bootdisk mysefl, it's the best tool ever..ghehe). Then type fdisk /MBR. This will clean up the master boot record.

2 - Try booting WinXP again after fdisk /MBR. If still not working, try making FAT32 partitions or NTFS, so windows will probably find the HD's. I'm sure fdisk does it, but I'm not very good with it, I use cfdisk, a more newbie (as me) version of it.

Again, I'm pretty dumb when it comes down to partitions and windows problems

. But give it a try if you've got nothing important to lose in your hd's

. Also sorry to give you so many "maybe, or perhaps, or possibly", but I really am not good at this problems, although, we all been there once too

hehe

desrbd · 08-21-2003, 10:20 AM

Dont have a win98 bootdisk hehe :/

I'll try fdisking using my knoppix linux cd

/thanks!

Greg2 · 08-21-2003, 11:45 AM

Since you don’t have a win 98 bootdisk you can go to any hd sight but I would suggest Maxtor and d/l a small program called Max Blast. Use it to make a Max Blast bootdisk and use that to format and partition as you like! One small bug: if you are not using this tool to install a Maxtor hd it will complain, simply (type retry and press enter) twice.

Greg