I have Windows XP on my computer and I am trying to install Mandrake 9.2. I got rid of my virtual memory, hibernation, and system restore and then defraged my hard drive. I have about 11GB free on the disk, but the partitioner in the Mandrake installation won't let me assign any more than 800MB to the linux partition. Does anybody know how to fix this? Are there hidden files that defrag isn't moving away from the end of my HD?

You may need a 3rd party partition program like Partition Magic that will move data as well as shrink/create new partitions.

Baldrick

It could be, the default defrag in WinXP pretty much sux, see if this helps:
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/fr...gedefrag.shtml

I just ran pagedefrag as well as another 3rd party defrag program to no avail. The drive map in Diskeeper shows a system file at the end of the drive. Is there any way that I can find out what this file is?

Are there free equivilant to Partition Magic?

Resizing NTFS partitions
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html

For a fresh Linux install with keeping ALL my Win stuff intact I will use PartitionMagic (or another nondistructive software) to resize Win partition(s), then create Linux partitions (as many and the type that Linux distro req. - for ex. I created 3 partitions: /boot /swap and / for my Fedora install). After doing that just install Linux on the partitions created under Windows (Linux will let you choose where you want to install it durring setup). It worked for me without data loss!
Short storry: do the partitioning for linux under windows!

I'd advise too that you make the partitioning in windows using partition magic 8.0. It IS worth the money. I once tried to use free stuff and just got a non booting system and hard to use stuff.
Btw, remember to make a swap partition (double your ram until you reach 512mb).