I need help guys. This is what i am trying to do. First this is my spec. I have presario 2580 US compaq laptop and i have try to partition the HDD. I have use partition Magic to create another partition for linux and when i reboot the computer it goes through the step on resizing the hdd and creating a partition. At process of doing the resizing the partition, i get an error 27 can't lock HDD for the new setting. Maybe you guys can give me an idea or solve my problem on how can i install linux on this machine to have dual boot. I even try lilo and same thing, the worse is that i loose my operating system when i use lilo and i have to reinstall everything again. Well guys i hope you can help me out with this problem

Why not allow the GNU/Linux install partitions your hard drive? You don't say what distro you are trying to install, I know that the later versions of mandrake and suse allow for the resizing of ntfs partitions. You will also need two partitons for linux. One for the main file system (known as root or "/") and the other for swap (like a windoze page file). If trying to dual boot, make sure that you have windoze installed first and then linux. The linux install should detect your windoze install and create an entry in lilo/grub for you. If it doesn't, you don't need to re-install. Just add an entry for XP and you should be fine. Oh, and don't forget to make a linux boot floppy during setup. Resizing partitions is always dodgy....make sure that you have a backup of any important data first.

I am sorry for not specifying the version. I am going to install suse 9.0 Pro and i try with Grub and lilo. I do still get an error. The error that i get is that i have to defrag my HDD and i did it. Once i degrag the HDD still the same error and it only creates 6MB of partition. The thing that i don't understand is that is say it cannot lock HDD so why's that.