I have recently copied the Slackware 12.0 Image onto a DVD, and tried installing it on my computer, but to no avail. By then my hard drive had been completely erased. Since then I have recovered and loaded Vista back on.

Then one of my friends told me about installing Linux onto a Flash Drive so it doesn't interfere with the files on your primary hard drive.
Any information I might need? I'm planning on buying either a 8 or 16gb USB Flash Drive this weekend.

Did you just copy the .iso to a CD, or did you burn it as a .iso image? The install CDs must be burned as a .iso image. You can't just copy the .iso to a CD.
For Vista, you first need to partition the hard drive. Use Vista's build in partitioning tool to shrink the Vista partition to make room for Slackware, then install Slackware to the free space you created. You will then be able to install Slackware and still have Vista:
http://vistarewired.com/2007/02/16/h...windows-vista/
If you need a tool to burn .iso image for windows, try Infra Recorder or Iso Recorder:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Bu...9%7C%28burn%29
Can you give more info? Did the install process start and then fail? Give details about exactly what you did and what went wrong, and any error messages if you can, and I'm sure someone here can help.
And welcome to the LQ forums!

I copied the ISO Image to the DVD yes, and Would it be possible to install and boot Slackware from a USB Flash Drive?

Try using the Forum Search tools. Using them found me this (amongst many others):http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...ht=flash+drive

Seems that some people think this is a bad idea due to the limited writeability of flash drives.

This is wrong, you should burn it as an image. Just copying the ISO won't work.

Make sure before you shell out on a usb drive that your PC will boot from a usb drive in cmos setup. If your BIOS doesn't support it, it won't work unless you use another medium - e.g. a floppy - to boot first with which then hands over control to the usb. For that effort it would be easier to learn how to burn an iso image to cd/dvd.

Thats what I meant I burned the image to the DVD.

Welcome to LQ Slackware forum!

You could do quite a few things actually.
One of which is getting gparted, repartitioning your HD so that you can dual boot your vista and your slack.
Or but a second HD (preferred) and dual boot that way.

when you say you are having problems, you didn't say weather or not it would actually boot the DVD or if it was durring the installation. Maybe issues fdisking? Please give some more details as tommcd suggested.

The installation went wrong when I began partitioning the hard drive with cfdisk. I had partitioned the Hard Drive, and went to write the partitions but the option wasn't there.

Lets use good ole'fdisk and try.
First, it sounds like you have 1 harddrive and vista installed on it. Correct? You should be able to dual boot by doing the following.
Get Gparted ISO. http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gpa...2&big_mirror=0
You will need to dfrag and scandisk your HD before you use gparted. it makes the process run faster.
Boot up gparted. if it doesn't boot up the gui, there are instructions to boot it up. just use the vesa driver.
In gparted, all you need to do is move the slider down on the HD to shrink it. make it whatever size you want but besure to also leave free room on your windows partition. i would leave a lot, depending on your hd size.
write that configuration. it can take a while to do that depending on the size you are creating and moving.
once you are done boot slackware
once in the CLI, type fdisk -l
you should see 1 drive, 2 partitions /sda1 and /sda2 (if you have sata drives hda for IDE) depending on how you told gparted to finish. you can use gparted to do everything i describe below as well.
type fdisk /dev/sda
you can press m for the menu.
Now lets assume you have 50gig partition for linux and you have 2 gig ram. we'll make a 48gig partition for linux and 2 gig swap.
press n->p->2->enter->+2G
press n->p->3->enter->enter
that last one uses all availiable space for the last partition.
press t->2->82 this labels partition 2 as swap
press a->3 to make linux bootable.
press w to write.

run slack setup.

agentc0re,

I tried your suggestion by using Gparted after I have installed Freespire on my 80G hard disk, then installed Slackware, but got stuck. The screen showed that I had to deleted one of the /dev/hda before proceeding. I did that then, but after all installed I could only boot Slackware, not Freespire. Have I missed out any step? What should I do with the lilo?

I'm not sure why it had you delete one of the partitions. it's possible that it wasn't a partition that you could resize and so that was your only option of freeing space. do you know how you formated it? ext3, jfs, xfs? Maybe you moved the bar the wrong way and didn't shrink the partition but deleted it? Can you be more specific on exactly what happened in the whole gparted process?

What partition did you write slackware to?
what partition was freespire on?
You probably deleted the partition freespire was on instead of shrinking it... thats my guess.

I think I need advice in how to configure LILO and GRUB, instead.

I have reinstalled from scratch, fresh install I think it's called, 2 OS's, Slackware then Freespire.

After installing Slackware 12, I ran Freespire LiveCD, ran GNOME Partition Editor which showed:

/dev/hda1 linux-swap 2.01 GiB
/dev/hda2 ext3 20.00 GiB
/dev/hda3 unknown 54.68 GiB

I used hda3 to install Freespire, no swap file, I think hda1 is sufficient. So Freepire has been installed in hda3. I reboot but the boot screen only give Freespire as a boot option but not Slackware. However, if I boot using Slackware 12-d1 CD I could still boot into Slackware 12.

I just don't know how to configure the LILO or GRUB to show both Slackware and Freespire options when I switch on my computer.

@dive:

I'd just like to point out that if he managed to hose his Windows install, that means he didn't mis-burn the disk.

Freespire uses grub:
http://wiki.freespire.org/index.php/...hat_is_Grub.3F
Did you install Freespire's grub to the master boot record? I assume that you are getting Freespire's grub on bootup since you can boot Freespire but not Slackware. To set up Freespire's grub to boot both Freespire and Slackware follow post #4 from this thread:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=393379

I just used Opensuse 10.3, and managed to install in my 80 G hard disk 3 OS's: Slackware, Freespire, and Opensuse. But the boot screen on switching on my computer shows the Opensuse boot screen and it shows only options for Opensuse and Freespire. Maybe I can squeeze 5 OS's into my 80 G hard disk.