System:

AMD Athlon 64 bit 3400, Bios 1.09, 1GB Ram, 2 Sata HDD, 2 CD/DVD
WinXP installed


Partitions:

C: NTFS Primary Active - WinxP - 10 GB
*: Extended Primary - 295 MB
D: NTFS Logical - 80 GB
E: NTFS Logical - 62 GB
/boot: Linux Ext2 - 8GB
Swapspace2: Linux Swap 2 GB
F: Fat32 Logical - 40 GB
G: NTFS Logical - 50 GB
H: NTFS Logical - 50 GB
I: NTFS Logical - 2.6 GB


Objective:

To install Mandrake 10.1 64 Bit as Dual Boot on my PC. Currently I have 3 CDs.


Problem:

Mandrake CD1 boots from CD-Rom. I get to the installation routine. I am told that partitions cannot be read. If I choose to ignore I get the following message: "I can't find room for installing" and the system goes neither forth nor back.

Any idea whether I have to change my SATA partition allocation or anything else?

Thanks in advance

Mat

Because of your unusual layout Mandrake may not be able to make heads or tails out of your partition table.... or there are errors in the table which Mandrake sees and then refuses to do anything as a result...

You may want to try booting from the Mandrake CD and ALT-TAB'ing to the console then

fdisk /dev/hda (or whatever your drive is).

Also are you SURE that SATA support is being loaded upon startup?

Mandrake does have problems with SATA boot devices.

What would be a recommendable layout of the partition?
It seems as if SATA HDD drives are recognized. The only thing which is not recognized are the partitiions.
If you have any hint how to re-partition the HDDs, any suggestions are welcome.

Thanks

Mat