dual boot headaches
 

Apologies for posting in both this forum and the newbie forum but i wasn't sure which would be the most help

I'm currently running windows 2000 and have a download distro of Mandrake 10. I have been trying to set up a dual boot system but so far have failed miserably. My windows installation is partitioned into a 20 gb C: drive and a 100 gb D: drive, both are NTFS.

I followed the instructions i found here

and selected the "use space on the windows partition" option when it came up. On the next screen i was asked if i wanted to use either the C: drive or D: drive to install my linux os on. As i'd defragmented and chkdisced the C: drive i tried to install it on there and kept getting an error message saying that the format of the C: drive wasn't supported. I then selected the D: drive as the drive to install Mandrake on and everything seemed to proceed swimminlgy, until i got to the bootloader screen. Now according to the guide i was following I would need to install the bootloader in the MBR of the drive. As I had installed Mandrake on the D: drive i wasn't given an option to put it anywhere, it just installed it automatically. When i got to the final configuration screen i checked the bootloader config and there was no option to change it to the mbr so I left it as it was. I then followed the remainder of the installation and rebooted and after the intial load screen all I got on the screen was a black background with a capital L and a flashing cursor next to it. I left it for a while and nothing further happened so i restarted and the same thing happened. To get my computer to do anything I had to reinstall windows again.

I was just wondering where i went wrong, was it in trying to install it onto the D: drive, should it always go onto the drive that has windows on it? What was wrong with the C: drive that meant that it's format wasn't supported? Would some software such as system commander help me with my dual boot or am i destined to only be able to run windows?

Any help at all would be awesome

cheers

Interesting, and wow, thanks for all the info. I'm getting sick of "it's broken, fix it" type questions..

If you select custom paritioning, you should be able to set what you want to use for what, including shrinking the ntfs partitioning. I find it eaiser, and it lets me set the size of each of my Linux paritions to my own pleasure (I use a 1gig swap instead of the 512, never too much, and I read somewhere to use double the size of your ram)

From what I know (granted that isn't a lot) you should alwasys install the Bootloader into the MBR (which it should alwasy give you the option, have yourun the md5?). I have seen some people choose to install the bootloader into the Linux partition's boot drive, then add the linux option into window's boot.ini

That might be an option for you.

Why do you have two partitions, or is it two separate drives?

Oh, and if you ever mess up window's bootloader again, there is a great tool on the Install disk. If, when it boots, you press r it should drop you into the recovery console. You can run the fixmbr command, and it should reset the boot settings back to Window's bootloader.

Are you using Lilo or Grub? I know there was some issue with Grub and kernel 2.6 giving you a blank screen when trying to boot.

And if all else fails, you can always shrink your NTFS parition using windows with a program like Partition Magic (or its free counterparts), instead of using Mandy's partition tool.

The "L" is an idication of a broken Lilo installation. You *should* be able to get into your Mandrake installation by booting up your installation CD, but I am not sure of the steps to take, as I haven't had to do that before. perhaps re-running the "install" without formatting anything, and checking out the LILO configuration?

Hi,

I am a newbee also, but I will try not to steer you wrong. First if you get a boot loader hang up you can with a DOS disk do a format/mbr what that does is reset or destroy your loader and give you back windows so you don't have reload. Now for loading Mandrake. If you are using a partitioned disk or a dual disk it will make no difference. What I am going to ask you to do I would do on the 100 gig side of the drive. When doing the install and you get to the partition section take the advanced option. Leave HDA alone that is your windows partition. Go to HDC that will be for linux. First option use EXT2 make that root or /, make it as big as you need to install your Linux OS on 15 gig is plenty. Next make your swap partition about 1gig is ok. Next and here you get some argument between users, I make a partition called Home using Journalized FS. You can use the slide bar and make it as big as you want, tell it to format and still use the rest of the partition for windows storage or what ever. I hope that this helps

cool guys, cheers for the tips i'll try them all out and see what happens

deusexlinux, i've got two partitions, one to store data on and one for programs so if i need to reformat C: for any reason i don't lose all my data

at least that's the thoery

:newbie: but trying :D