I’ve read the HOWTOs below to setup a dual-boot config with WinXP Home SP2 & SuSE 9.1 Pro. http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Multiboot-with-GRUB.html http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Partition/index.html I want to split the disk like this: 10MB to boot WinXP, (FAT16) 30GB WinXP, (NTFS) 20GB Linux, (Linux) 1GB Linux Swap, (Linux) 29GB Shared Music, (FAT32)? I have some questions before I roll up my sleeves… Should I partition the drive before I install Linux? If so, can I use FDISK from XP’s recovery console to do this? Or should I partition the drive from within Linux after installaion? I’ve read both HOWTOs a few times and I’m confused I’m not installing DOS or Win98 so I won’t need the Windows 98 emergency disk & the DOS bootable disks, right? Does anyone happen to know an easy way to convert the block size into MB to calculate the size of each partiton? What’s the best way forward? Thanks in advance everyone

The best or easiest way to proceed depends on the details of your current situation. Is Windows XP installed on the computer now? Does the Windows XP partition fill the drive, or is there available space to add new partitions? Do you have partitioning software, such as Partition Magic? I'll start with the worst case scenario: Windows XP is installed on one partition which consumes the entire drive, and you have no partitioning software such as Partition Magic (I do not know if Suse supports nondestructive partition resizing, so I'll assume not). With this scenario, the easiest way to set up the dual boot is to use Windows XP's partitioning utility to remove the currently existing partition, then set up a partition for Windows XP of the size you described, and install XP there. Then use the Suse installer to set up the Linux partitions, and install Suse on them. If you have partitioning software such as Partition Magic, you can re-size the existing Windows XP partition to make room for the Suse installation, and create the Linux partitions. Partition Magic supports the ext2 filesystem, and the ext3 journalised filesystem as of Partition Magic 8. If the Suse installer supports nondestructive partition resizing, you can just start the Suse installer and do it all there. I use Partition Magic, and my OS is Mandrakelinux, so I do not know what Suse has to offer. Unless you have a third party nondestructive partition resizing / partitioning tool, you should let Windows XP's fdisk set up partitions for Windows XP, and let the Suse installer set up partitions for Suse. HTH, Ernie [ewilcox@buckeye-express.com] ICQ 41060744 Registered Linux User 247790