Want a duel boot sys, but mandrake messes partition!

[godspaz]

I would like to make a duel boot system on my computer, but everytime I try to use diskdrake in mandrake 7.2, it messes up.

I use fdisk in when installing windows to make the main partition, then use diskdrake to make the following changes on the other half of the HD (In this exact order):

15MB - /boot
128MB - Linux Swap (same as RAM amount)
xMB - / (The rest of the space on the partition).

after a message that says that the table will be written to HD, another message pops up saying "An error has occured/Linux Swap needs to be"... and doesn't finish.

I've tried multiple different partition sizes and configs and nothing works. I'm sick of having to install winme over and over. I know it works 'cause I've had it working before.

[x]

1.) Never, never, never use fdisk for DOS/Windows on a disk where you also have non-Windows partitions.
3 times I did that, three times I had my partition table massacred! Thank you, mr Gates! :mad:
Suggestion: use fdisk for Linux or similar, wipe & recreate the partitions. Make sure /boot is before cyl 1023.
If this doesn't help, or there is a problem with the swap-partition, then I leave this for someone else to answer.

[godspaz]

Thanx :D

[Dru Lee Parsec]

Absolutly invest in Partition Magic. PM will allow you to resize Windows partitions and create Linux partitions without screwing up your data.

You could just use PM to resize your windows partition and then make a single ext2 partition. From that point it's safe to use disk drake to create new partitions within your initial ext2 partition. but don't ever change a windows partition using disk drake. That's bad news.

[Molecule Man]

Why bother with PM? DiskDrake does the same thing and is free. I've resized Fat32 partions before with no data loss. Of course you want to use defrag.exe first.