Okay, I've a job on hand, keeping into account that I'm new to Linux world...
Let me introduce my system first...
Motherboard: 815 Intel original
Processor: 800 MHz Intel original
RAM: 256 MB
Harddisk: 40 GB (baracoda - little less than scsi)
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Now, I had win 2000 and and XP installed my system (with XP corrupted, and not in working condition). I have 4 partitions on my hard drive with C:\ = 5+ GB and other three with 10+ GB. I have win2k installed on C:\ and XP on D:\. No problem till now...
Then I ventured out for Redhat linux 8 (also note that I crashed my first hard disk while installing linux from this CD, though I checked the media and it was clean)...

Installating...
I choosed the drive E:\ for the installation and converted it to 'ext2' (really donno what really it is) and installed redhat with no problem with GRUB bootloader.

My share of problems
Now, the system is hell lot of slow when I boot my windows 2000 which is my primary concern and I installed Linux only to have some practice of it. It takes at least 2 mins to boot the win2k and what I feel is, I've screwed up my boot record. Also when I double click My Computer (open anyother application which browse all the drives) , the computer stop responding and I have to shut the application by ctrl+alt+del. Redhat Linux freezes after some time when I work in it.
I work as a professional graphic and web designer so the speed really matters for me, as you can note from my system specifications - I've this system for 2 weeks only, so nothing old stuff as such...

How I'm gona do it...?
What I feel like doing is, I'm going to install 'Partition Magic' in win2k and format and convert E:\ which has linux to FAT32 again - still not sure whether it would work or not. (not going to install linux on this hard drive until get a new one, as it used by whole the family and they really stare at me when working on this system)
Then I'm gona boot from windows bootdisk and run command
fdisk /mbr
to clean up my boot record as well

You recommendations?
That is how I'm gona do it but still waiting for your response. I don't wana loose any important data on my hard drive (which resides on seperate partition F:\). What I'm asking is, does the above method works or not? If not, how should I do it? I'm not concered about the first three partitions but F:\ which holds my data of hell lot of importance to me...

So any kind recommendations and helps?

Kind regards...