Okay, I'm totally new to Linux, hence me getting into Mandriva first, and wanting to keep my Windows.

My question is, what steps during or before installation need to happen in order for me to get a Linux bootloader onto my system?

What do I need to do to tell Mandriva that another OS is on my system?

My other harddrive is NTFS, will that affect the detection of the OS?

What do I need to do overall?

Thank you so much for helping.

I don't use Mandriva, but most major Linux distros will recognise a Windows install and you'll only need to click a couple of times to have a dual boot system. NTFS is no problem but Linux only reads NTFS (writing is unstable so is disabled).

I think there's a binary to install better NTFS writing, someone showed me a webpage for that... Would be interesting, but I wouldn't be interested in writing to the NTFS partition anyway, since Windows can't even recognize anything written in Linux.. ECK.

Anything in particular? Are the options for a multiboot system during the installation?

Nothing.

Okay, you *should* defrag your Windows system before doing any Linux installation.

Edit: I just reread the question. During the install, when it asks about installing the bootloader, choose the option to install it to the MBR. (That is the default, IIRC.)
Nothing. The installation process will detect Windows, and take appropriate actions.
No.
Defrag your hard drive, insert the mandriva CD, and reboot. Then follow the instructions on the screen.
You're welcome.

Thank you so much. I'm just making sure so when the install happens I won't have too many problems.

I have another important question: I want to partition the new drive I have so half of it is Linux-only and the other half is a shared harddrive space between Linux and Windows. Will windows have trouble recognizing the partitions made by a Linux installer? Even if I use FAT32 for both new partitions? Is there anything special I have to do within Windows to get it to see the new partition, or just a reboot into Windows?

Thnks for your time.

Noone? Oh, well.

If you create a FAT32 partition with the Mandriva partition tool Windows will automatically pick it up the next time you boot it. Before you do any repartitioning make sure you backup anything important on your disks. The Mandriva repartitioning thing is meant to be safe (ie. it doesn't destroy data if you resize partitions) but there's never any absolute guarantees with repartitioning.

Questions aren't always answered straight away on open forums like this. You should wait a day or 2 before giving up on getting an answer.

Okay, I'm new to this.. Thanks.

I'm not even touching the NTFS volume with the Linux partitioner/formatter, do I still need to back important things up? I ony have about 9 gigs free, and almost everything I have is essential. Plus, I have no method of backing up files barring burning them all to DVDs.

If you aren't touching that NTFS partition then its very unlikely that anything could happen (its unlikely anyway even if you were acutally resizing it). It still never hurts to have some backups before doing partitioning, maybe just your most important files.

Thanks so much for all the help, it's really been great. Tomorrow, the 'operation' will commence!

You cannot install Mandriva on a fat32 partition. Once you start the installation Mandriva will show you what your disk looks like. It is best to tell the partitioner to resize the ntfs volume. Therefore leaving you space to create Linux partitions for your installation. Once that is done I suggest you click the auto-allocate for your Linux partitions. Mandriva will create a sensible / partition, a swap partition and a /home partition. It is also wise to defrag your Windows installation before booting off the Mandriva install disks. Don't worry about creating a fat32 partition to read and write to between operating systems. Just make sure your /home parition is formatted as ext3 then you can go to www.fs-driver.org and install the Windows drivers to read Linux ext3 partitions and then in Windows you can mount it permanently and copy/write to and from your Linux installation.

Hope that helps.

These pages are a little old now
but will give an idea of partitioning using Mandriva
and setting up a dual boot

http://lineman.net/article90.html

http://www.littlewhitedog.com/content-52.html

Unfortunately I'm not aware of any modern how-tos to dual boot that have decent screenshots

cheers
floppy

Thanks to all your suggestions, the installation went flawlessly, and I have a successful dual-booting system. I'm using Windows right now because I've found that Linux is quite a handful, but it's gotta be uphill from here! Thanks everyone.

Just thought I would mention that if you have 9 gigs of essential stuff in your windows partition and only option to back up is to dvd, I would suggest you do that. I just finished reinstalling my operating systems on a new drive this morning since I just had a two year old Maxtor drive fail (the one my operating systems are/were on). I used a second separate hard drive for backup. Seemed like a good idea, till my primary drive failed and only drive available was the backup drive to install operating systems onto. Used a live linux disk to copy backups to dvd before installing operating systems to the backup, now called the "only" drive. They don't make em like they used to, warranties even reflect that, Maxtor and others no longer warranty their drives for three years, they only guarantee them to work for one year anymore.