Newbie Linux Install/Partition Help

I have a Compaq 2100 laptop with XP loaded on. After hearing all the nice things about Linux on AO, I decided its time for me to go see what all the fuss is about. I went out and bought RedHat Linux 8. I know that I have to have 2 other partitions to load Linux on. I got Partition magic 8 also, according to one of the tutorials I found on here. I clicked on the "Add new OS" thing and went through and partitioned 15gb and 1 gb. Then when I restart and it starts to go through partitioning stuff, I get an error 982 "Too many errors" and it stops, aborts, and restarts into XP. What's going on here?

Try looking at the log of the partitioning software, and see what kind of errors there are. That could help you/us figure out what to do.

Also, is there any chance that your hard-drive has suffered any physical damage?

I have Partition magic 8 also, look threw the documentation, if your booted into XP, go into the partition magic folder from the programs list from the start menu, then select the...i think its either help or how tos, find installing an OS and if you can, print this out, itll go step by step into what you have to do, also, if Red Hat isnt going to good for you, get SuSe or slackware or debian or caldera open Linux, and if your feeling adventerouse, go to http://www.freebsd.org and get freeBSD, its very good and also has alot of online helpers:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO...ook/index.html
That link there ^ will take you threw the before installation and installation and even after installation instructions to get you goin, but before i keep going, is there anything you have on the laptop that you need/use? if its an extra computer to you, just pop in the install CDs and boot from it and use the hole HD for it which is way easier, when it asks about partitioning, create a "/" partition without the quotes for root and a swap partition, now depending on your RAM, lets say you have 256 MBs of ram, make your swap about 512 MBs if you have 384 MBs like me, use about 771 MBs for swap, and also Linux seems to run better with the swap partition being at the begining of the HD, so keep that in mind if you can do it go for it, and youll prolly want X installed to because well, it makes learning Linux much easier for newbies, because you can use a GUI or the command line to do things, but like i said man if you dont need the laptop to run XP id just put Linux on there for now and then you have something to learn on, and if you ever want that taken off and XP put back on for some reason, then just boot from the XP CDs and reinstall that, be sure you have all partitions deleted and if you reboot to nothing but it saying "loading stage 1" (which iv had when a redhat install went bad on me) then reboot from the CD or boot floppy and get to a command line, from there type fdisk/mbr and that creates a MBR on your PC, getting the Linux boot loader off and reboot and that should work, but as i said, reply to this and tell me if you have the Laptop as a spare or if you really need it and XP installed and stuff and ill see how i can help you from there:)

I'd like to do a dual boot...I do still use XP for things like Powerpoint, Word..blahblahblah.

I'll try some other things and get back to everyone with more info.

Well I ran the error checking app on windows and now everything seems to be going ok. Right now its running through its stuff (I'm on my desktop). I'll keep everyone that cares updated.

UPDATE-- Ok now everything is loaded. The XP works, its what im on now. But when I try to start linux it goes through a bunch of load up stuff but then gets stuck at - "starting pcmcia"

Any thoughts?

I never installed linux in a laptop but how long did you wait? it sounds like probably you will need to do some re configuring the kernel to load the right module for your pcmcia. but most of the times when is loading all those things after sometime will say "failed" and them will continue until is up and running and them when the fun part starts.
:)

What exactly is a pcmcia? and why would I need the right module for it..and..yeah...I'm a confused newb right now...help...

PCMCIA is the slot on the side (or back) of your laptop that allows you to connect external devices such as DVD drives, modems etc to your laptop. Also here's something i found after a (very) quick google.

Quote:

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Upon booting the install CD, if you choose the default boot command linux, then the system will get to the beginning of Anaconda before freezing just after PCMCIA detection. This is due to a bug in the kernel related to the ALI southbridge. To continue the installation, at the prompt instead type linux pci=off and press enter. Installation should continue normally. Make sure you choose a text mode login, for xfree86 will not work without some tweaking (more below).

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I just copy-pasted the relevant stuff for you, but you can read the rest of it here
Cheers,
cgkanchi