I recently aquired Mandrake Linux 8.1 and wanted to partition my drive which has Win98 on it. I tried both PartitionMagic and the partitioning that comes with Linux but neither allow me to partition. Mandrake Linux says that it is unable to partition the drive while PartitionMagic throws me Error 4001: No valid redirection area found or Error 3: Not enough memory. I've gone to the Powerquest website and tried all the things they suggested for those errors, but to no avail. Right now the only solution seems to me to do a reformat and hope that fixes the problem but I'm really not looking forward to that. Does anyone have any other solutions or suggestions?

Here is my file on Partition tools . http://www.bootdisk.com/ AEFDISK 1.7 Get Rid Of NT, Linux Partitions, More DELPART Another Partition Deleter With a GUI Masterbooter + EFDISK 3.1 Boot Mgr And Partitioner CleanSlate 1.0 Partition/MBR Backup/Cleaner Tool Partition Managers Ranish 2.40 Zeleps 1.3.4 --- Ranish Partition Manager ( Freeware ) http://www.intercom.com/~ranish/ DOWNLOAD part.zip Partition Manager Can I partition my disk without losing data with your Partition Manager? A: Yes. You can. If you have one large FAT-16 or FAT-32 partition and you want to create another partitions, without losing existing data you have to do the following: 1. Defragment your C: disk. 2. Run partition manager and change partition size in TWO places: partition table and boot record (you get there when you press Enter). Make sure the size does not drop below minimum partition size. 3. Reboot computer and run SCANDISK to check for errors / adjust FAT-32 free space. 4. Create new partitions. Save and restore MBR Create and delete partitions View hard disks' IDE information Format and resize FAT-16 and FAT-32 Support for the Extended DOS partition Comes with Compact or Advanced Boot Managers Advanced Boot Manager Boot menu with password protection Automatic partition hide and unhide Boot any OS from the second hard drive Create up to 31 primary partitions on a single hard drive Detect presence of the boot viruses in memory FAT-16 boot sector code replacement Boot MS-DOS from partitions above 2G Dual boot MS-DOS and Windows 95 OSR2 Once installed, it can be used with any boot manager ======================================================================= Partition Resizer ( Freeware ) , no files are lost using it . Plenty of step by step help included . http://members.nbci.com/Zeleps/ ======================================================================= Delpart.exe From NT 3.51, this utility can delete extended NTFS, Lilo, and just about any other type of partition . DELPART is a DOS based utility that will remove NTFS partitions from hard drives. FDISK is unable to remove some types of NTFS partitions. DELPART can wipe clean a hard drive, then you can use FDISK to create partitions normally. http://www2.netquest.com/tech/MyPC/utilitie.htm http://www.lss.ksu.edu/download/msstuff/ ======================================================================= FIPS is a Freeware program for non-destructive splitting of harddisk partitions , no files are lost using it . Plenty of help . http://www.igd.fhg.de/~aschaefe/fips/ ======================================================================= Partitioning info. http://www.zdnet.com/zdhelp/stories/main/0,5594,2246333,00.html ======================================================================= Partition Manager Now for all Windows versions: Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000! Full support of NTFS from Windows 2000 along with old NTFS standard. Built in BootManager Easy to boot different operating systems! Resizes partition without data loss! (FAT, FAT32, FAT32x, NTFS, HPFS and Ext2FS). Converts NTFS to FAT32 or FAT! Works with big hard disks (more than 80 GB). NOW! Converts FAT/FAT32 to NTFS. Cluster size is not increased! (note: converter from Microsoft sets minimum cluster size - 512 byte). http://www.partition-manager.com/index.htm

Hi Theresa. I have SuSE Linux 7.3 on a computer here and I will tell you what is happening, ok? First of all, Linux wants to install to the boot sector, so if you already have Win 98 on the hard disk, Linux will not install that way. You need to create a second partition on the hard disk (use Fdisk, that is one way...and cheap, or use Partition Magic 7.0 to create a second partition). Then you will be able to install to the second partition. You might try a piece of software called Partition Commander from VCOM, which has the ability to create a Linux Partition for you.

Thanks. I'm going to download that one and see what happens. The other two never let me resize the FAT32 partition in the first place. I never got beyond that step. That's where I got my errors.

I know I need to create another partition. That's what I've beent trying to do. I've used PartitionMagic and tried using Linux to partition (it does have a good partition tool). First step in the process is to resize my current FAT32 partition, but neither program will do that. I haven't tried fdisk because PartitionMagic is more powerful and I thought fdisk wouldn't do any good if neither of the other programs worked. I will try fdisk and the program John suggested but I doubt it will work. There seems to be something on my hard drive that won't let me resize my current partition. I was trying to figure out why it won't let me resize and wondering if anyone knew why and what to do about it. I'm also no newbie at partition having used both PartitionMagic and fdisk before several times on several systems. I've just never come across this problem before. This is my first time working with linux but this is not a linux problem.