[genelake]

Hi...I'm a newbie trying to install Red Hat 8.0 on my computer in a dual-boot configuration.

I have a Gateway computer with factory installed Windows XP...768MB of RAM, 1.5Mhz Pentium 4 CPU... 40GB harddrive.

I have a factory purchased copy of Red Hat Personal Edition 8.0. I have two problems. The first problem is that the Red Hat web site won't accept my Product Id Number that came in the Red Hat box. I called Red Hat...too busy to answer. I left a voice mail to call me.

Second problem...tried to install Red Hat using the free space on the one Windows partition. I was afraid to try to partition the disk. Don't know how. When Red Hat tries to do the "auto-partition" routine it says it can't because it can't find a /root. Something about LBA. Don't have any idea what to do next. For what its worth...I was able to get Knoppix to install and work after buying a Linux-compatible modem. Thanks for any help anyone can give me!

[KHAYMAN]

Hi genelake,

Im a linux Newbie too, you say you are running Windows XP. Is your harddrive partitioned using the NTFS file system? If so, i believe this may be your problem. To get round this when i installed Linux i used Partition magic 7 to set up my Linux partitions before i installed Linux on my machine. I use Redhat 8.00 and SuSe 8.00 and i found both installed ok on a machine with XP installed after i set up the partitions with Partition magic 7.00.

hope This helps!!!


Kind regards

Khayman

[gotrootdude]

Sound's like what you need to do is boot with a win98 boot disk.
www.startdisk.com
Then run fdisk and delete all partitions except the XP one, Then boot the redhat disk. I'd also suggest useing a linux boot disk which you'll get a chance to make during installation, to boot the linux OS. XP used to be a pain to get to dual boot with linux.. I still don't trust grub or lilo to dual boot an XP system.

[genelake]

Thanks, GOTROOTDUDE and KHAYMAN for your advice. My disk has 1MB of free space on the front and 4MB at the end and WINXP has taken everything in between. It looks like Partition Magic is the answer. I am going to use PM to resize the XP partition and make some partitions for Linux. Hope I can get that done.l

Thanks again for your help.

[KHAYMAN]

Anytime!!!

Partition Magic is a dream to use, but it must be 7 or above for XP compatability and NTFS.

Regards

Khayman.

[genelake]

OK...Partition Magic is the answer. I resized my 40GB drive to use the first 20GB for WinXP and the last 20GB for Red Hat Linux.

After resizing the disk the Red Hat installation went smoothly. Red Hat detected my mouse, keyboard, and monitor correctly and configured each. I went into KPPP and keyed in my ISP name, my ISP phone number, my ISP account name and my ISP account password and logged on to the internet with no problems.

BTW, my Actiontec PM560LKI PCI modem works great with Linux.

Now the configuration problems begin.

I'm going to start another thread about those problems. Thanks all!