i put in the first disk and restart, everything goes fine until i get to this portion: preparing hardisk- step 2 installing on: 1. IDE, 42.93 GB, /dev/hda,Maxtor 94610U6 This message pops up: This disk appears to be used by windows. There is not enough space to install linux. im given the option to: either: delete windows completely or shrink windows partition. then i get this prompt after choosing the shrink option: An error has occured your windows partition has errors in the file system. please boot windows and clear those errors with scandisk and defrag. If this problem occurs again next time shrink the partition by other means. i tried the scan/defrag disk thing it didnt do anything, same error. i also checked an option in the beginning of the install called: "custom partition" it had this information: device start end /dev/hda 0 5954 42.9 GB maxtor 9461046 /dev/hda 0 5954 42.9 GB win 95 FAT32 (LBA) is windows tricking the hardrive into thinking its using it all? or possibly telling the hardrive it needs it all? how can i partition this drive myself? any how to links or other software that might help me with this? i have no idea what im doing! ive never done this before! i have a hewlet packard pc with windows 98se OEM upgraded to windows me. anyone have any ideas? ive also put in a request to the suse site asking them what to do. thanks in advance to any who reply

hu If I was you I would defrag then try to resize the fat32 again.Because 1.the resizer checks the bounds of information on the partition and if they are scattered all over the place you cant get much of a resize. 2.If you relley have a file system error windows wont let you defrag till its fixed. If you do have a problem with windows and you resize you may very well crash the system make sure to backup good luck!

If you give up on your partition tool here is a free one. Just go to. http://www.bootdisk.com Scrool down to... partitioning. Then check out . Ranish.

im going to check out that link mark. SuSE comes with fips. this free partitioning program is on the cd rom but seems rather confusing. i have never used linux or partitioned a drive before. ive tried multiple times (more than 10) to defrag and i have even went thru the tedious "thorough" scan disk which takes for ever! ive read lots about partition magic but i cant seem to find a shareware/trial version. its priced anywhere from 25.00 up to 70.00 depending on where you buy it. i dont mind buying it but i hate buying software i only use once and dont get to try out first. im sure we all have lots of "unfulfilled promises" in our software collection. does anyone know if this program truly takes the guess work out of it or if its just another "gotta figure it out" program? Thanks for the reply

I doent wont to "Infest your post" And if anybody wonts to add to what Ive posted Please do. But I tell you straight up.. Almost NOTHING in linux happens with out figguring it out. I kid you not. I broke 3 keyboards and 1 mouse in my first 3 month attempt at getting linux to run on all my cards connect to the internet and mount vfat. The whole Idea of linux is "FREE" or at least cheep.My advice four what it is worth is figgure it out.This is your first major linux problem and there are many many more to come. If you know nothing about partitions this is a good time to learn.If you wont to invest in your computer future and spend 70 bucks...get another hard drive and pratice on that so all you have to do is slap your current drive back in if it doent work,If you get drive trays you can do this in 15 seckonds pluse a reboot.But ya if you wont to learn about computers You HAVE to learn about partitions and strange looking apps...thats the fun of it! good luck!

I solved the problem by getting rid of the OEM version of windows that came with my PC and installing a full version of Windows OS and being able to create the partition with Fdisk. believe it or not the microsoft tech support guy walked me thru a clean install of windows and helped me get linux loaded. thanks for your replyz