Phillip, Linlov,
The problem you are likely to face may still remain after you follow the standard practice of installing duel boot os. This is because LILO in Mandrake 7/8 (I dont know about grub) looks for a standard DOS partition in the system and puts the lilo in it. For some reason, it can not do that if the partition on "C Drive" is using NTFS. Since you have WinME, chances are that you have a NTFS file system in the first partition. You need to have the first partition using FAT. I have faced this problem before.
One solution is to create a new partition as the active partition which will have a small (100 MB or so) space, let winme reman the in the second partition and linux in the thrid and fourth partitions. The problem for you now may be how to create a new partition on "C Drive" without deleting the data on it. I dont know how to do that :-(
As to why it works this way, I dont know. Hope someone on the list can enlighten me.
Regards Saswata
PS : Phillip, before you start commenting on "bad practice", please note that this message is top posted since there is no effective place to put this in between your reply.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Philip S Tellis" philip@ncst.ernet.in To: "GNU/Linux Users Group, Mumbai, India" linuxers@mm.ilug-bom.org.in Sent: Wednesday, August 13, 2003 11:26 AM Subject: Re: [ILUG-BOM] Help 4 Mandrake 7.0 Installation
On Tue, 12 Aug 2003, Linlov L wrote:
installation. I wish to retain WIN ME and other important data on drive C and yet have Mandrake on D. How do I go about it? I wud
Delete the D partition using Windows. The concept of C/D/E drives was introduced by MS DOS since they didn't understand mount points :D
You need an empty area of your disk (unpartitioned) on which to install any other operating system. Deleting D will create this unpartitioned area. You will also lose everything that used to be on D, so back that up if you need to.
<Disclaimer> I have never installed or used Mandrake Linux. I am not responsible if something goes wrong by following my instructions. </Disclaimer>
Then, when installing Mandrake, you could probably go through automatic partitioning. If you're not sure, make a note of the options that you have available, and post back to this list.
[You should probably stop reading here]
If you go for manual partitioning, you'll have options like /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2, etc. /dev/hda1 is your Windows C drive, so leave it alone. /dev/hda2 is (most likely) what is known as an extended partition - one who's only purpose is to contain other partitions.
These other partitions will be numbered /dev/hda5, /dev/hda6 and up. You will probably not have anything other than hda1 and hda2, so choose to create new partitions inside hda2. As a beginner, you'll prolly want to create just one partition (it is hard to change later on, but nevermind), until you understand the concept of partitions.
HTH
Philip
-- You may be infinitely smaller than some things, but you're infinitely larger than others.
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