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Hmmm,
I have been giving this some more thought, as it is a subject that has puzzled me for some years now.
We have all seen software that manages the boot up, they give you the option of which OS to use, and away you go. Some were very clever, and hid each OS installation from the others so they did not get jealous and start to squabble amongst themselves.
Modern developments along these lines would seem to be the "virtual machine" technology? there, they do not even know they are in the same hardware environment?
To get back to the subject:
We all know that to format a hard drive does not actually do a lot except set it as "available" for something new? so, I would think that there must be a lot of residual partition data left over, that is understood as "available" by one family of OSes, but possibly not, by another?
It would seem that Windows (family) "sees" these strange residual partitions and thinks that it is a hardware error? (it understands that it is partition information, but does not understand that it is a dead partition) On the other hand a linux distro recognises them (because they are linux creations), creates new, proper partitions, and everything is rosy?..............Windows sees a live partition and can live with that because it is alive?
I guess the answer is that Windows was not programmed with linux in mind.............hell, it even falls over itself in my experience.
That is why I recommended wiping the drive first.
Pure speculation on my part..............a bit too difficult and time consuming to prove, I am afraid
:)
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Lol, careful Nihil, saying that is gonig to have someone calling you "3137" or whatever that is because a Windows install CD doesn't like partitions other than Fat and NTFS. ;)
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It's really not going to cause a problem as long as you have a bootloader set up right. When you pick what you want it to load it will only read from that partition. I have tri-booted plenty of times and never really had a problem.
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I've tri-booted before too. I've also seen someone who had 100 OSs on their computer. Needless to say they had very special special software to allow this. I have software here that can boot up to 100 or so OSs though I haven't ever done it.
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Probably Acronis
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing...tibooting.html
Although I can't imagine why anyone would want to have 100 OS's on their system!
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I think after about 10 it's just for show. I can't imagine using more than that. That would be enat though.
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My copy of 2000 is like 5 years old. It is CRAP at recognizing partitions and modern files systems. Of course a lot has changed since then. But Linux is always better at recognizing windows files systems than windows is at finding your Linux riser system. Unless you get a new release and even then Windows won't always work well. Why? The don't have too. They don't WANT too. Linux on the other hand must and does. Formatting a hard drive ties the logical structure of the disk to whatever file system you are using. A partition is a partition, it's under the format process. No partition or currupted table... no format. Heck you might have been missing a driver windows doesn't have and Linux does. Who knows. Too many variables. But I bet your linux distros are way newer than that windows burn. So a partition is a partition.... Unless you use a windows dynamic disk. I don't know WTF is going on there. And I do mean WTF?
Windows should recognize a partition unless you are using some wild ass new schema. Even if it doesn't know whats on the partition it should see it. Perhaps the partition table was corrupted. And using the windows wizard installer didn't like it. That's why we have hard drive tools. :D Windows likes it environment nice and cosey. But there are tools in windows that can manually handle a bad partition table. But they suck. That's why you should keep those manufacturer disks that come with hard drives. Or have a copy of UBCD. Besides kick ass hardware tools.... its "special" and loaded knoppix distro comes in HANDY.
/EDIT oh and I kind of agree with Tiger. Personal box, no big deal. But if that HD was going into a mail server or something else critical.. it would meet my BFH and a trash can.
