Partitioning...

[SimonM]

I have Mandrake 9.1 installed on my hard drive, but I'm going to a LAN Party in a few weeks. Because Linux isn't too great for games, I want to install Windows on a partition.

How would I go about doing it without losing data, and still being able to boot into both operating systems?
I've made a Partition Magic boot disk, but that only asks me which partition I want to boot from.....

[quip]

You could go a few different routes, one of which is using partition magic, but while I have had no problems using it before, I have heard many people did when creating/modifying linux partitions.
You could learn to use fdisk, it's really quite simple. Search a little for it, and use it to create a new partition, then use window's fdisk or pm to format your new partition.
Since you have mandrake 9.1, you could also use diskdrake. Mandrake has some docs on their website concerning it here (http://doc.mandrakelinux.com/MandrakeLinux/91/en/Starter.html/diskdrake.html)

[mdwatts]

If necessary, you will need to resize your existing partitions to make enough space for Windows.

Did you install the Linux bootloader in the mbr? If you did, then ensure you have a working Linux bootdisk or you can boot into rescue mode with the installation cd, add a section to your bootloader config for Windows and then run

/sbin/lilo

to rewrite Lilo to the mbr OR

grub-install /dev/hda

to rewrite Grub to the mbr.

All as root.

[SimonM]

Excellent...I partitioned the hard drive, and now Linux wont boot properly. I probably did it wrong, but I'm just going to reinstall....Linux was only on there for a few days.