On Sun, 2005-08-07 at 23:55, Keith Keesing wrote:

My ignorance has got me into a mess that is quite beyond me.

I got a new upgrade box some time ago, with a microsoft partition taking up the whole disc, but no operating system installed. I reduced the microsoft partition and installed Suse personal 8.2 (from CD) with no problems and used it for quite a while. I then deleted the linux partitions and tried to install windows 98 in a 10Mb partition. The CD would get as far as displaying installation options, but when I made a choice all I got then was the cursor blinking in the top left corner. I get the same result with a dos floppy boot disc with fdisk.exe on it - as is the case with any dos or microsoft boot process I have tried. I then reinstalled Suse (using the whole 40 Mb's) and have been using it trouble free for some months now, but I don't have the knowledge to do quite everything I want to. Even if I do work out how to do everything in Suse, (which I would much prefer) I would like to understand what I have got myself into.

Yes its called a boot loader. BTW use a more up to date version. I can send you a set of 9.1 disks with a recent update disk you can use with yast. I have windows and Suse on this just fine. You partition for windows and with 98 which I also use split the partition into two 5 gig you will have less slack space. Then install suse it will take over from there though you will need to use expert install to handle the partitioning for Suse. First you make the rest of the disk an extended partition then you should make four logical partitions with in it for Suse. /boot 64mb / 8 gig /swap at least 128 mb up to twice memory /home use the rest of the disk. If this is too much for you contact your local linux group. Its only about an hours time for experienced users for a simple install most of which is baby sitting. My first time took 9 hours with a 2 speed cd 32mb memory on a PI 233 using Suse 7.0 -- ___ _ _ _ ____ _ _ _ | | | | [__ | | | |___ |_|_| ___] | \/