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Installing Mandriva 2008.1 spring on XP pc


Fred01
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Folks,

 

I'm at 1st time of my live trying to do an installation of Installation Mandriva 2008-1 spring on a Windows XP machine.

The pc. has a HDA with Windows XP -- and through 'my computer' it shows as:

 

C = HD (120GB)

D = DVD station

E = CD-RW station

 

My wish is to create a dual-boot on the pc. with both XP and Linus installed -- so that Linus can also read the data I've on windows.

 

So I started with running 'CHKDSK' followed by 'defragmentation', than rebooted with the Mandriva DVD in de DVD-drive and got as

far as the installation menu, some windows further the installation menu already provided me the choice to "Use the free space on

the Microsoft Windows partion".

So clicked 'next' and got the window re. Formatting where I've to choose the partions I want to format -- at this point the installation window shows the possibilities:

 

- hda(C:)(1.9GB),/mnt/win_c,vfat)

- hda(D:)(109GB),/mnt/win_d,nfts-3g)

 

standard the first entry is ticked as choice = hda(C:)(1.9GB),/mnt/win_c,vfat), but when clicking 'next' Mandriva comes back with an error message:

 

"Partioning failed: your Microsoft Windows partion is too fragmented - Please

reboot your computer under Microsoft Windows, run "defrag" utility, then restart

Mandriva Linux installation."

 

Did again the 'CHKDSK' followed by 'defragmentation', than rebooted with the Mandriva DVD in de DVD-drive and got same error message.

 

My point is that as within Windows XP the configuration shows that I (only) have one HDA = C: -- I thought Linux also has to use C for the installation,

and don't understand why the Mandriva installation comes back with also an HDA=D: ( as within Windows my D: is the DVD-drive station) .

 

So my question is if the above is a known effect and if the above story means I can install Mandriva using

the 2nd option in the fragmentation window of the installation program, thus hda(D:)(109GB),/mnt/win_d,nfts-3g)

without running the risk Mandriva is going to use all of my disk and whipes out XP. ??

 

Thanks in advance,

Fred

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If it marks C and D, it looks like it has found two partitions on your disk. Now, the 1.9GB partition could be a recovery partition on your system, and the one marked as D is your actual Windows installation. Check in the Windows partition management tool, and you'll see two partitions, and one of them won't have a letter assigned for you to be able to get access to it.

 

Best way is to choose custom partitioning and then resize the main Windows partition to make space for Linux. However, how much used space is on your Windows partition? How much space is free? Need to look at allocating three partitions for Linux.

 

swap = 1GB

/ = 20gb

/home = however much space you like

 

this would be ideal for you to have enough space to install and then /home can be for data files stored in Linux for your user. So decide, how much you want to free from Windows, to use with Linux. Either that, or untick C and tick D and then try to click next and see how it partitions your disk. 1.9GB is too small a space to install a system and is probably why it's failing.

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Thanks Ian,

 

Think you might be right -- my pc has pre-installed Windows / plus other applications and has a re-covery function/CD.

so presume some of the pre-installed SW + recovery modes are hidden on the disk.

The total HD = 120GB and when I got the pc. at first, the available space was 109GB.

now still some 90GB on free space left.

 

What stroke me however was that Linux came back with a HDA as being D:, where within Windows I only can see the C:

 

However with Mandriva indicating this D: with a volume of 109GB looks like it sees all of the available C: -- only indicates

it as D: (although still don't understand why Linux referes to the HD as D: where Windows sees it as C:)

 

So actualy I presume in that case that whan I would indeed use and tick option D = hda(D:)(109GB),/mnt/win_d,nfts-3g)

to format, Mandriva should have the right space on the HD to look for partioning and crating the dual-boot mode

keeping Windows along side ?

 

Fred

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The reason why Linux sees it as D: is because it sees two partitions on the disk. It can't tell that one is normally hidden in Windows and that the larger of the two is actually C:. So it just sees the first one, makes it win_c and the second larger one win_d because this is the ordering on the disk. The smaller of the two comes first, the larger second. The recovery partition on preinstalled machines is normally always first on the disk.

 

And yes, you'd deselect the win_c because it's 1.9GB and the recovery partition and too small anyway. You'd make sure that win_d was ticked, and it should then resize it and put partitions in place. In honesty, I've never done it this way, and always done it custom - but you can always see what it's attempting to do during the installer anyway and decide how you want to proceed.

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