Jeff Greene wrote:
>
> Hello,
>
> Can anyone give me advice on how to set up my hard drive so I
> can set it up for a dual boot for windows ME and linux.
> I know I could set linux up on the FAT 32 but I'd rather not
> do it that way.  I'm a novice so I don't know much. I know
> a little about partitioning using fdisk but that's about it.
> I have a single 76 gig hard drive. I have set a system up
> with Suse linux a couple of years ago but not dual boot.
>
> Thanks for the help.
>
> Jeff

Jeff:
The first hassle is to create some space on your drive for a Linux
filesystem. 3 gb is more than adequate, 5 gb is very nice, although
there's nothing wrong with more. While I've never heard of anyone having
problems with the utility that is included on the Mandrake CD, I've
always used Partition Magic -- run from a floppy -- to do this. The
usual drill goes like this:
1. Backup everything that needs to be backed up.
2. If you've got a lot of junk on there, this is as good a time as any
to clean it up.
3. Run defrag (very, very important), and shut the system down.
4. Restart and go into the BIOS.
5. If you're going to use Partition Magic, change the boot sequence to
"floppy first"; restart the system, and make the appropriate changes to
your Windows partition from PM. While PM can also set up your Linux
filesystem, my preference is to do that as part of the Linux
installation.
6. Depending on your level of paranoia, this would be a good time to
check that Windows is still OK -- reboot, enter the BIOS setup, change
the boot order to primary IDE, and verify that Windows still works.
7. Boot into the BIOS once more, and tell it to boot from your CD-ROM
drive. Also, set "PNP operating system" (or whatever term your BIOS
vendor uses) to "off".
8. Put your first Linux CD in the drive, and reboot.
9. Install. One caveat: Select the expert option -- some versions of
Linux (in my case Redhat 6.1) can wipe out Windows. The secret is to
select an expert install. For some reason, the default installation for
RH 6.1 didn't provide the same options concerning disk partitioning and
formatting, and I understand the Mandrake had the same problem with one
of their 7.x versions.
10. Once you've negotiated that hurdle, you can pretty much accept the
default options.

Depending on your hardware, the remainder of the installation shouldn't
take much more than 30 to 45 minutes. That would include installing Star
Office, setting up your ISP, network, printer, video, etc., plus more
than enough applications to keep you busy for a while. (Grin.)

Here are some good sites for Mandrake-specific help; if you haven't been
to them, check 'em out:
1. www.linux-mandrake.com (Mandrake's home site -- be sure to look at
the hardware compatibility list, as that can avoid some problems later.)
2. mandrakeuser.org (Many excellent articles here.)
3. Mandrake sponsors several very active mail lists; there are links to
them from their home page. I strongly recommend a subscription to the
newbie list. You can also access the list archives at
[log in to unmask]
4. www.mandrakeforum.com provides timely information directly from the
Mandrake developers.

One last thought: If you are not using a real modem, you face some
additional challenges. While it is often possible to get your modem to
work, there are times when no solution is available. The two best
sources of information are linmodems.org and
www.idir.net/~gromitkc/winmodem.html.

Good luck,
Carroll Grigsby

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