I'm a linux newbie...and I'm tech challenged
looking for advice on properly partioning XP and linux

Right now i'm just using linux because I accidentally screwed up my harddrive to the point where it would not either operating system

Here's what happened:

1. Partitioned harddrive using partition magic and set-up an ext3 and a swap partition in addition to the existing ntfs partition
2. Installed redhat
3. Upon frequent reboots, computer booted straight to XP and did not go to LILO so I had the option of choosing
4. checked partitions through partition magic: (it did say something about partition tables not sequence in MBR or something to that effect)
5. drank a few beers while mulling over problem
6. uninstalled/deleted merged linux partition as lost cause to be tried later
7. attempted to reboot to XP and recieved errors that computer could not boot please restart...infinte loop
8. realized that i probably had to reinstall xp and start from scratch and that my i haven't backed-up files recently
9. cried a whole lot

I think i screwed up around step 1 and step 5 just made things worse alchohol+computers = sad Pat

I will be reinstalling XP later this week and try to start the process over again. Before I do so, however, I would like to see if anyone has any instructions/advice on doing this correctly. Please use small words as if you were talking to a 3 yr old that rides the short bus to school.

Pat

first install windows with however large partition as main partition, lave rest blank, then boot to linux install add 3 partitions, a 100mb one mounted as /boot, a one double the size of your ram for swap, then whats left as a root partition (/) and use the linux installt o make the partitions, not pmagic, then when installing lilo/grub select mbr as install area rather than root or floppy.

If youre going to re-install XP and Red Hat later this week then:

Install XP First making sure you leave some unpatrtitioned free space at the end of your drive for Red Hat to go on later - so for example if youve got a 60gig drive you might create and install XP on the first 40 gigs, then leave 20 gigs totally free at the end of your drive - you dont need to partition this 20 gigs in advance with magic - when you come to install Red Hat, use its tools to do this.

Install Red Hat Second - at the partitionign section choose the option to "keep all existing partitions and install into the free psace" ie youre telling the installer to leave the XP partition alone and install Red hat automatically into the free space,

Install either LILO or GRUB to the MBR.

Make a RH bootdisk near the end of the Red Hat install just in case of any problems.

thanx for the advice...when i have a day to kill over the labor day weekend i'll let you know how everything turned out...if i don't post before then happy labor day everyone

I don't mean to hijack this thread but was wondering if you could help me with something:

I installed WinXP Pro on a 6 GB partition.
I then installed SuSE 8.2 and let it choose the best partitions that it thought it needed.

I use GRUB as my boot loader and everything works fine, both OS's boot up with no problems and I have internet access on both.

Now my dilemma, I have one big unformatted 59 GB partition left on my hard drive that I need for file storage. I have Partition Magic 8.0 and first thought would be to use that and make it into two smaller partitions (one for Linux and one for WinXP). Format one of them for windows and boot up into Linux and format the remaining one for Linux.

Or, as I've seen posted elsewhere, is it better for me to just cut this partition into two in Linux and it'll work in Windows??

rberry88

uhm.. make it a large fat32 partition, both linux and windows could then use it.

Got it, was thinking about that but then of course a million and one voices tell me that would be too easy. Thanks for the help.

rberry88

TargutMunky, do you have XP restore discs? You may be able to
fix your MBR and reboot.