[wellylug] Dual boot setting up partitions - Newbie Linz

[Phillip Rose]

I'm going to wade in here, and I hope that someone else will add their 2¢.

At 11:55 10/04/05 +1200, you wrote:
>I have a PC that Ubuntu destroyed bu XP partition on and I have
>installed Mepis with the aim of getting it re-partitioned.
>However qtparted shows the Xp partition hda1 as free and hidden.
>Even though I have selected this partition under operations all
>operations are greyed-out accept Properties which doesn do much.

I haven't seen this problem before. Is this the same for all partitions?

>I have to reactivate that partition as XP which just not go on any other
>partition no matter how hard I try.   I have created anther NTFS
>partition by it will not go on that.  I have tried Fdisk with DOS and it
>wont change it.

DOS fdisk cannot see Linux partitions, or maybe even Windows partitions
that Linux has somehow interfered with.

>  I would prefer is as FAT32 but cant even do that.
>
>Some idea's please.   This has been an on going problem for two months
>at least now.

It sounds like that partition is hosed. I suggest you start from scratch,
reformatting your drive. Boot your computer from the MEPIS live CD, log in
as root and you should be able to format your drive(s) exactly as you want
them from there using qtparted. I have found cfdisk easier to use than
qtparted because the help is better. Win XP requires NTFS for installation.

Basically, you want to "pre-format" your HDD so that Windows will only see
and use the part you want it to, then install Windows, THEN install Linux.

What I did with my 60GB laptop hdd was format it 20GB NTFS, 20GB FAT32, and
20GB ext3. The first OS you should install is Windows, and it will only see
the 20GB NTFS partion. Next, install MEPIS or whatever, and it will
automatically live happily with your Windows installation. The reason for
the FAT32 partion is to have a partition that both OSs can write to.

I suggest you do some reading about this process (I'm sure you have
already!), but here are some suggestions:
http://www.mrbass.org/linux/mepis/installmepis/
http://www.mepis.org/forum/4
There are lots of Qs and As in the latter. You may have to get a username
in order to see the forums.

Good luck!

--Phillip