Red Hat Install
 

I have a computer running Win 98 (primary partition). The HD is 40gig but my MOBO only supports it as a 20gig. I also have a primary partition setup for Red Hat formatted for "ext2". Plus a swap partition for Linux. I set these up using Partition Magic 8.0 and I have Boot Magic also installed.

I tried to install using the version that came with the O'reilly book "Learning Red Hat Linux" the problem I had was that the boot disk would work but I would get an error about the "HDD file system error", so I couldn't install to my HD.

Now I burned the first 3 disks (is this all the disks I need?) of the Red Hat version 8.0 to install off off. Now, the system wouldn't boot from the CD for the install even if I made it my first boot option in BIOS. It boots to Windows 98 using Boot Magic. It will boot using a floppy to install Red Hat.

The error I'm getting on both installs is "An error occured reading the partition table for the block device hda The error was: No such file or directory". How do I get past this?

Can someone please explain how to go about installing Red Hat without destroying Windows. Or should I format the whole HD and start by installing Red Hat?

I am very frustrated b/c of all this. Should I try a different distro or buy a boxed version of Red Hat?
Help,
Joe

If your format the whole HD install Windows first and then RH.
Try running Scandisk in Windows and see if it corrects whatever the error in your partition table is.