I have three NTSF partitions. One has my windows installation(F:). Another one has backup files and music(D:). The last one is empty except hidden system files(C:). It is labeled "Music" in the picture, but it is empty now. I want to delete that one and install Linux on it for a dual boot. About the last ten times I tried to install a dual boot on this computer with Ubuntu, windows would get corrupted, and then I would have to reinstall everything. I have tried alot of suggestions and none of the ones I tried worked so far. I always get this error "missing or corrupt hal.dll" after installing Linux and trying to boot XP. I used the Windows disk and went into a recovery console to try to repair. That did not work, but I can try it again. This time I try, I will be installing FC4. I have already tried Debian and Ubuntu. I never had this problem before, not even on this computer. There is another problem. The NTFS partition I want to format to use the space for Linux has the boot.ini in its root directory. Will formatting that drive cause problems? Doesn't windows need the boot.ini file? It sounded strange to me that the boot.ini file was not on the partition with the windows installation. My last question is about 1024 cylinder limit on harddrives. I was told today bootable partitions including windows and linux both must start before the 1024 (about 8 GB) cylinder or else the partition will not boot without a floppy. I never knew that before and my dual boots with Linux and XP always worked. Please give alot of information because I don't want to mess this computer up again and start all over from scratch. I saw that my windows partition is not primary. It is logical. Will not having a primary partition cause problems? I thought I needed my bootable partition to be primary. Here is the contents of C:/boot.ini
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
Here is a picture of my partitions using Partition Magic 8.
http://www.geocities.com/fakie_flip2000/partitions.JPG
