well, I did it. After hours of wrestling with mandrake (10.0 community) I finally got it to reinstall. YAY!!! My next challenge- make an NTFS partiton. Install Windows 2000. Then vector linux, then knoppix. YAY!!!

I have grub (lilo baulked) on a floppy- so I can forget the whole problem of windows writing over the boot loader!

anyway- late sleep- (if I can!). Network is working- using iceWM for the first time- love it!!! I thought I was a gnome person, forget that, I love iceWM!

firefox installed without a hitch- on my way!!

3 flavours of linux (rpm, debian and slackware) on my box! plus a windows for games!!! I'm so pumped- I'm raving so I'd better sign off.

titanium_geek

Life is good, the birds are singing, God loves me and I'VE GOT LINUX BACK!!!

Just a hint--installing Windows is never the "next step" in a dual, triple, or quadruple boot. Windows must be installed first; otherwise, it screws up all your Linux installations.

I see no problem with installing Windows here. Windows can only overwrite the boot loader if it can find it!

any ideas where I should start looking for help creating a NTFS partion in mandrake? or knoppix or whatever.

thanks XavierP, that's what I thought.

I know windows can be a pain- that's why I'm installing it next. (so I only have to reinstall ONE linux lol. ) I feel confident- 2000pro shouldn't be as picky as 98, .... I hope.

titanium_geek

Marking the partition as type 07 HPFS/NTFS with fdisk or cfdisk should allow Windows to decide it wants to format it during install.

YES!
ok, so I put knoppix in the cd drive and said knoppix 2 (text mode) and ran cfdisk. to look at the second disk I had to type cfdisk /dev/hdb

now installing windows 2000, we'll see how that goes.

titanium_geek

yay! now installed slackware! I can't believe it- I thought those "other" linuxes *mandrake* *cough* *cough* were cool- but man! slackware is awesome. I love it, it doesn't let me do anything at all, which means I need to actually LEARN!!! yes!

anyway, so now I have 2 os's on this computer, have to boot slack using the boot disk but working on it, working on it...

titanium_geek