Dual Boot on COMPAQ Evo N1015v laptop

[Cookie-Monsta]

Guys/Gals,
I've got a copy of Mandrake Linux 9.0 and I need to install it on my laptop. I want a dual boot on my laptop. It has a 30Gig HDD right now and has only got Windows XP on it.

The most I know how to do now is to partition the HDD with Partition Magic so I am currently doing that.
I am assigning 10Gig of that 30 for Linux so yeah. After partitioning, how do I install it as I am a literal beginner to Linux...

I just need it to install properly and if someone could step me through the whole process, it would be great.

Oh yeah and the laptop model is a Compaq Evo 1015v with AMD 1800+, 30Gig, 512Mb DDR RAM, and all those other ports, PCMCIA, PS/2, Ethernet, 56K Modem etc.

thanks

[mdwatts]

Since you have already created the free space necessary for installing, just follow the online installation instructions on Mandrake's site.

[jetblackz]

http://jetblackz.freeservers.com/ConfiguringMultiBooting.html

[Cookie-Monsta]

Hey ppl,
Thanks for the help... :) much appreciated, but I have encountered a rather wierd problem which I can't seem to find a solution for online at the Mandrake site documentations.

The situation is:
I have my laptop off with the Mandrake 9.0 CD 1 inside the CD-Drive. I boot up the machine and it boots at the CD-Drive and goes to the selection of "press F1 or press Enter" screen and no matter what I do, whether I run it normally or run it in expert mode, it will come to a stage just after detecting the USB ports where it tries to detect the PCMCIA slot and I think it has a problem doing that and then it turns up with an error saying "Kernel panic: Unable to continue" and then the whole process halts there.

I have read that I'm supposed to change the Plug and Play devices to be intialised by the BIOS, but I can't seem to find out how to do that as I can't find the option to do that.

Any help ? Anybody heard of this before ?

thanks

[mdwatts]

Try what I suggested in this thread (http://justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=92627&highlight=nopcmcia) on 'nopcmcia'.