Atlast now u get my point...
Sorry about that - I'm a linux person and only recently started using Windoze
I use my D and E partitions for Music and other important things i don want to mess these partitions up...
So now can u tell me how to install linux on F partition.. and where do i use the / thing...I am not able to use the SWAP partitioning(Is SWAP partition really important)..
and also after i install linux i should have the option of Dual boot-up..I should have the option to choose either windows or linux...(i had partitioned my F drive as NTFS..if that is important)...
There are 2 ways to do this, one which might not work, and the other guaranteed to work.
a) Try and see if Grub/Linux can work with extended partitionsLoad the linux CD, during the fdisk setup phase, tell it you want to replace F: with and extended partition, and then split that into F: G: and H: drives. Then you can mount /boot on /dev/hda7 (F:) / on /dev/hda8 (G:) and swap on /dev/hda9 (H:)
Hopefully, if its not going to work Linux will tell you straight away that its not supported, without you having to go through the rest of the install and then watch it crash.
b) Just use a single partition for linuxLoad the Linux CD, during the fdisk setup phase tell it that / is on /dev/hda7 (F:) and that there is no seperate swap or /boot.
In both casesThe NTFS on F: will be erased automatically to make way for linux, so don't worry about that.
The bootloader(GRUB) needs to installed on /dev/hda to replace the MBR. Linux will automatically setup GRUB to give you the choice of booting from Windows on /dev/hda1 (C:) or Linux on /dev/hda7 (F:).
(As I said earlier, make sure you don't put GRUB on /dev/hda1 because then when you select Windows it will find GRUB on /dev/hda1 and you'll be back where you started. So GRUB
must go on /dev/hda)