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linux installation failed on my new PC

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I have a new computer with a 20GB disk. I installed windows98 on the first
>partition. Windows NT installation on the extended partition failed
>until I installed atapi.exe during the windows NT installation. Now
>linux redhat 7.0 installation failed. I don't know why. Who can help ?

5 replies

by cpfeiffe

Do you have a partition magic book? It will be easier to refer to the tables in it if you do, but I believe you are having a problem with boot sectors. The boot portion of NT must go on the first 2 GB of the primary disk. The boot portion for Windows 98 must also go on the first 2 GB of the primary disk. I'm not that familiar with Windows so maybe you got around that with atapi.exe. The boot portion of Linux must go on the first 8 GB of the primary disk. So this is what would be recommended.
1) on the first 1 GB create the partition for windows98 C:
2) on the next 1 GB create the partition for NT C:
3) in the next blocks of space create the linux partition (be sure that the boot - / and swap file systems are within 6 GB (up to the first 8 GB of the disk). Your other file systems can extend beyond this
4) after the linux file systems create a D: so you have more space for data for windows98
5) finally add a D: for windows NT.

I also recommend installing boot magic.

Youcould be having other issues, but I'm pretty sure you are outside of the space limitations and this is a good place to start.

Reply with a comment if this does not help and I'll see if I can offer additional suggestions.

by magellanix

So you want to install Windows NT, 98 and Linux on a 20Gb Hard disk.

First structure of partition should be like this:
Primary Partition 1 - Win 98
Primary Partition 2 - Win NT
Primary Partition 3 - Linux
Primary Partition 4 - Linux - SWAP
The size for above partitions are for you to decide, for SWAP I recommend 2X the size of your RAM.
The installation order should be different too.
Install 98 FIRST on partition 1
Install NT SECOND on partition 2
Install Linux THIRD on partition 3 (NOTE: Partition 4, you will set that up during linux installation )
You can partition the hard disk using FDISK utility, which is found on Win98 startup disk, CDROM, NT etc...

If you have anymore questions, just post here :-D
Cheers

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