Mandrake installation help needed!

[gabriel413]

Everything goes alright until I get to the partitioning part. Then, when I select "Use free space on existing Windows partition" or whatever that option is, it gives me a "partition failed" message!

And in custom partitioning, I can't partition off a section of either of my harddrives greater than 300 MB (one is 14 GB, the other is 4 GB...and the 4 GB one won't let me partition at all). This is strange, since I have 2 GB of free space on my big drive...

So what's wrong with it?

[voidmain]

I'm not that familiar with Mandrake or it's installer but I definately would partition the drive.  As far as why it may not be able to partition larger than 300MB:

You may only have 300MB of "contiguous" space at the end of the drive.  If that is the case you will need to get into Windows do a "full/complete" defrag (I doubt Mandrake will defrag your Windows partition for you, that would be a Windows function).  Turn on the advanced button when you defrag it so you see if there is any data left at the end of the drive anywhere.  Then try and run the installer again.

If that doesn't work, and even i it does work I would suggest not doing the defrag and using "Partition Magic" if you have it, then shrink your Windows partition with Partition Magic (you don't need to defrag if you use Partition Magic) and leave plenty of free space at the end of your disk for the Mandrake installer to create the partition on install.

If you only have 2GB of free space you are hurting.  You are going to want some breathing room on your Windows partition, and 2GB is pretty skimpy for Linux if you want to install everything and have plenty of room to work.  But 2GB is certainly enough to play around.

Good luck!

[Pat]

Partition failed is prob. an error on your windows partition, prob. a cross linked file. I'd boot in windows and run scandisk, if your lucky scandisk will finish before windows crashes.  Then try installing Mandrake again.

In Mandrake installer, I'd do custom partition either way you go.  I'm not sure but you might not have enough free space, maybe that's what It's complaining about.  This may sound funny, but be sure you are shrinking the windows partition before you try to add the linux partition, then add the linux partition to the empty part (I think it is the "white part" in mandrake.)  Don't forget a linux swap partition also, maybe that's why it is complaining. That's all i can think of, sorry if I was just stating the obvious.

[ January 29, 2002: Message edited by: Pat ]