Hey all,

I can't belive I am doing this, but my geek knoledge has run out.

I admit it, I am a totall at linux.

But I want to learn it, I am working on a download of Mandrake 10, and I was wondering if while it was downloading, someone could either explain to me, or tell me where to find, instructions for dual booting my system.

I want to do it right, the first time. I have been fighting with WinXP for the past month, and I am sick of having to reformat every week. I dont wany any more trouble.

I know alot about WinXP and DOS basics, I can get pretty much any Win 9x system up and running after a crash, with minimal data loss. But linux is beyond me right now.

Thanks for helping another hopeless n00b!
Chynn

hey i am a noobee too......

its not that difficult........ just a windows like insallation....... for the 1st time i would say that dont change a lot of the configurations and 1st of all yes u need a part of yur HDD for this instalation. If you do not have that either format or use this some tool like partion magic to create a blank partition. if u wanna learn it ...... i would also add that dont give more than 4-5 Gb to this partition as its quite enough and u can also access yur other partions thru linux but its not the other way around......

anything else ... please post...

If you want to play around with linux w/o modifying your existing setup you could try a "live" cd that boots from your CD and runs entirely in RAM.
Look at http://www.pclinuxonline.com/pclos/index.html, http://www.knoppix.org/ , http://www.xfld.org/Xfld/en/index.html or others.

- Peder

I installed Mandrake Linux on my laptop. The install program will resize the NTFS partition for you. You may want to defrag the drive first. You will need to select the manual partitioning option. Then select the NTFS partition, and select resize.

One problem you end up with is getting the dualboot lilo setup working. It worked like a charm on my laptop, but when I had XP on my desktop, I'd sometimes have a problem. You might want to google for: NT Lilo Boot "How to" for a number of how-to's on using the XP's NTLDR program to boot into linux. It involves selecting the linux root partition to write the lilo boot loader, copying the first 240 bytes with the dd command to floppy, saving this file to C:\ and editing the boot.ini file to include a Linux menu option.

This may be unnecessary if writing to the MBR is successful.

mandrake makes dual booting very easy. With mandrake will even partition your hard drvie for you. All you need to do is insert the install disk.(correctly burned and having run checksums) Then tell it to autopartition in a new partition ad follow the directions. It should get you dual booting in no time