Hi,

I have a dell D600 laptop with ONE harddrive (60 gig). I created 2 (10 gig, and 40 gig) primary partitions (NTFS formatted) and have winXP installed on primary partition 1. I boot the slackware 9.1 installation cd and run fdisk.

Fdisk recognize the 60 gig harddrive but it doesn't recognize any partition i have (the disk show up as empty disk with no partition).

I thought this is prolly winXP weirdness so I create 4 primary partitions using fdisk (first two are NTFS, third is Linux, fourth is linux swap). Save the partition table and reboot with the winXp installation cd to re-install WinXP.

However when winxp installation boot, it doesn't see the new 4 partitions that i created, it still see the old partition table. I cancel the winxp installation and reboot the laptop. woala winxP still boot fine .

it's as if i have two harddrive, but i'm 100% positive that i have one .

any thought, ideas?

What says fdisk after a cold boot from a linux cdrom (boot after unpluged from any energy at least for 10 minutes) ?

Fluppi, I turned the machine off, take the battery out, leave it out for 15 minute, boot with slackware installation cd. Fdisk see the 4 partitions i created under slackware fdisk (Not the partitions created in winXP). Reboot w/o the CD, winXP boot up like normal. So it's still the same with a cold boot.

My last idea is that the "Boot Sector not writeable" or "Boot sector Virus Protection" in the BIOS is active ?

I don't think Linux and NTFS get along very well I tried numerous time to install dual boot NTFS (Win 2000 Pro or XP Pro) with NTFS and i never worked but if you install the same OS but use FAT instead it should work.




RObert

Best idea is to wipe out those M$ partitions, you don't need them anyway.

And, wow, this thread is ancient.