Hey guys,
I'm trying to repartition my harddrive which previously had windows xp on it running on NTFS into fat32, however, when i try and run the windows xp installer it will only give the option to repartition into NTFS. I don't want this since I'm trying to set up a gentoo/winxp dual boot system. Anyone know how to get this to work out? Thanks.

well i don't know if this was the best approach to take... but i just found an old win98 cd and threw it in. I deleted the existing partition and i'm currently letting the win98 disk reformat the hdd. ummm... hopefully the gentoo livecd will be able to see the partition table now, if not im gonna be stuck again.. can anyone give me some feedback?

I've never done dual-booting myself, but are you not supposed to create two separate partitions when you dual-boot Linux and Windows? I would certainly do that and leave the Linux partition unformatted.

yeah that's what i'd do ideally, but the win98 cd didn't give me an option... it just formatted the whole thing
assuming fdisk can see the partition table when i'm done i'll do everything all over again with that... then I can set up my sizes and such.

If you have any bootable Linux CD, you should be able to use the "fdisk" tool that comes with Linux to manage partitions the way you like it.

Alternatively you can create a Win98 boot floppy and run its version of fdisk to do the same thing.

i've got the gentoo linux bootable cd that i keep getting into but when i run fdisk it only seems to see what i think is the CD drive.... it always sees one partition with 658.03 mb that is write protected... sounds about right
do i have to mount the hd or something so i can repartition it?

my partition table currently looks like this, after booting to the gentoo 2004.3 livecd, i get a prompt and type

fdisk /dev/hda

I get this back when i print the partition table

wtf is going on....?

omg so i figured out a little bit more of the puzzle....

I need to type:

fdisk /dev/hdc

and not hda

But now I've deleted the old ntfs partition, and looking at fdisk, I'm not sure which fat32 partition type to use. I see one that says W95 FAT32, but I'm installing Windows XP on the fat32 partition, is this going to be a problem? hlp

Nope, that should be fine.

Alternatively:
Using linux fdisk create your linux partitions. Leave the XP partition types blank, or give them any type of Fat partition type, once in the XP installer, you'll be creating a new partition on that space anyway (being careful not to choose the wrong partition with the Linux filesystem, but using the fat type should aleviate this) and format it.

Cool

i don't remember if winxp can run on a fat32 partition, but what you can do (assuming you want fat for ability to transfer files b/t systems) is install winxp with ntfs, you CAN partition only a portion of the hard drive with the xp install. then, with gentoo livecd, make a fat partition and a ext2/3/reiserfs partition (plus swap, of course) and instlal gentoo. then you can share files between systems with the fat partition.

**edit**

masterC, xp does not play nice with preformatted, non-ntfs partitions, and especially is not nice with respect to the mbr.

Okay, well I've partitioned the first 30gigs into one of those W95 FAT32 paritions, I'll be installing winXP onto that. Now I've created a 32MB partition that I'll be using for linux boot, but not that the partitions been created and I'm trying to change its system Id to ext2, looking at the hex reference menu I don't even see ext2 on there... I do see linux, and linux extended and linux swap.... what should I do?

**edit**

Wait, so windows XP won't run on fat32? People on other forums have been telling me that this is totally the way to go... Help :-/

it is probably choice 82 or 83. and you would be looking for linux. during the install process (after you partition) you will probably do a lower level format of that partition anyhow. so you could partition as linux (i think that ends up ext2) but then do a format to reiser (mkreiserfs)

Since MasterC already answered your main question, I'll just touch this part. You must have connected your CD/DVD drive on the master of the primary IDE controller. If I remember correctly, the IDE device names (hda to hdd) are used this way:

hda - primary IDE connection; master
hdb - primary IDE connection; slave
hdc - secondary IDE connection; master
hdd - secondary IDE connection; slave

Certainly, during the XP install he will choose the partition that has type fat32 (which XP will at least be able to see as a seperate windows partition). But XP does absolutely install on and work with fat32 partitions.

Cool

Okay, now this is definately the path that I'm trying to go down, but windows XP isn't recognizing the W95 FAT32 partition as a FAT32 partition... It's still trying to partition this into ntfs...

Is there not a choice to format as fat32 at that point? With all my (re)installs of XP, when I get to the formatting part, the partitions I've setup in Linux as Fat32 aren't recognized other than as "other windows partition" or something similar. I then choose to format them, but choose the fat32 option over NTFS (the first 2 options are NTFS Quick and NTFS, then the Fat32 Options). If you aren't getting a fat32 option, sounds like maybe it's a Home vs Pro option, or the install Disc I use is 'special' in some other way.

Cool