Ok i have read the manual a lot of times but im still confused about few things like boot loader. And I need your suggestions. I dont have any backup mechanism so please help me. Because I want to preserve my current OSs. My System: One hard Disk with 4 Partitions c,d,e,f. All are FAT32 And have 6 GB of unpartitioned area are for linux. I first installed win98 on C:, then xp on E: drive. I want to preserve both of them. I choosed automatic partition first, then i could see that it preserved all partitions. And only creating new drives in unpartition area. MAJOR PROBLEM: When install got to boot section, It only detected DOS. So added the third partition to be windows XP, which was 3rd partion/drive in terms linux, by guesing C=1,D,E: drive =3rd. I kept the default boot loader for linux. I also choosed to install it on root partition instead of MBR. What I am really worried about is that if my boot settings are not correct or something gets wrong. And at boot time I cant see my win98 or winXp in list. Then what will i do? I will I manage to have my win98 and Xp back in boot options.

Also while unpartitioned area was of 6GB. The setup gave error during copying install image to hardisk. That there is not enough space. While manual says its acceptable.

What version of redhat are you using? what boot loader, lilo or grub ?
Do not use automatic partitioning, it will create a hell of partitions. 6 gb are enough, but you might experience problems when creating partitions if there is a large section of disk occupied. If that happens, try creating only one partition (mounted in /) and a swap.
Usually a good partitioning scheme is to have /boot (20 mb), / (root, 4-5 Gb), /home (the size depends on your needs) and swap (twice the size of your ram).

There should be no booting problem - 'dos' refers to the windows boot-loader in redhat - so you should be able to choose 98 or xp from there. if anything goes wrong, just insert your win98 cd, select boot from cd and enter fdisk /mbr ...

If you need to restore XP's boot sector, boot from the XP installation CD and in the first or second menu press R to get to the "recovery console" where you can use the commands fixmbr and fixboot to get things back.

Thanx for you suggestions people, I wasnt able to reply them.

Anyway somehow I managed to install linux and boot loader in MBR (because I was unable to perform steps required in case of BootSector install).

Now I have 2 big problems
I have RedHat 9

Modem:
Linux was unable to detect any modem when I asked the NetworkConfigurator tool. I have an internal&OnBoard "US Robotics 56k Voice Host Int"(as named by XP). So what should I do now. You know net is very important!

File-sharing with WindowsXp:
In order to share files I have added an extra partition by resizing linux-boot partition, using PartitionMagic. And formated it as FAT32 from XP's diskMgr.

I heared(by googling) linux can understand Fat32 but my Linux cant show this new partition. As im new to linux I dont understand how it works.

Ok i have also solved the file-sharing issue but still there are 2 issues

No MP3 And AudioCD sound:
It has detected my onboard intel sound device. And its media players can play all .wav files. Also I have turned on sound server and sound events(which can hear). But media players dont play mp3 songs. They play AudioCD but I cant hear them. All volumes all UP and none is muted.

Modem:
Linux was unable to detect any modem when I asked the NetworkConfigurator tool. I have an internal&OnBoard "US Robotics 56k Voice Host Int"(as named by XP). So what should I do now. You know net is very important!

Quote: Original post by DirectXXX
Ok i have also solved the file-sharing issue but still there are 2 issues

No MP3 And AudioCD sound:
It has detected my onboard intel sound device. And its media players can play all .wav files. Also I have turned on sound server and sound events(which can hear). But media players dont play mp3 songs. They play AudioCD but I cant hear them. All volumes all UP and none is muted.

Modem:
Linux was unable to detect any modem when I asked the NetworkConfigurator tool. I have an internal&OnBoard "US Robotics 56k Voice Host Int"(as named by XP). So what should I do now. You know net is very important!

The mp3 probably doesn't work because redhat doesn't package stuff on the system that could possibly be involved in media copyright/patent/etc issues. What program are you trying to use as an mp3 player? I would try some other one.

Getting modems to work in linux is tricky, because most of the functions of the modem are now in the driver and the card/chip itself does very little. I suggest googling on your modem name along with 'linux' and seeing what comes up. running 'cat /proc/pci' in linux will tell you what linux thinks your modem is(along with every other pci device on your system, so you have to dig a bit) It could be that you have a rebranded modem which does not actually use a us robotics chip but rather uses a 3rd party chip branded by us robotics.