You got a new HP Pavilion with lots of snazzy features, but you have a little problem you just cannot install Linux without making use of those precious rescue CD's provided by HP. The results of this are not very nice. Your carefully crafted partitions are flushed away by the 'format' commode. Leaving you with only two partition one having Windows and another having rescue data.

If what I have described above is the problem then you have come to the right place.

To start up I suggest you run the rescue discs once more and set the system to its orignal setting.

Get a copy of partition magic and install it on windows and format the partition having the rescue data. Then from the Main windows partition create two partitions

  • 1) for Linux create this partition after taking into consideration the size of the swap partition.
  • 2) create another partition of size say 20-30 or what ever is the minimum recommeded by partition magic.

Get a copy of XOSL(This is a bloody brillant piece of software). Get a fresh floppy make sure its bootable. Unzip XOSL and copy it onto the floppy.

Boot from the floppy and start XOSL(I think you have to type setup or something like that otherwise do a 'dir' and look for a '.exe' file and type its name)

This should start up the XOSL setup. Once you have managed this.Some where along the line the program will ask you if you want to install XOSL on a dedicated partion of its own or on the MBR select the choice with the option of installing on the dedicated partition. Then somewhere along the line it will show you what it would install. In the list you should find an option to install 'Ranish partition manager' deselect this option. And let the setup continue. Reboot the system after the install.

You should get the new XOSL startup screen. Here click the "setup" button and add a Windows entry to the list of options and select the windows bootable partion.

When you install make sure that you install the bootloader on the first sector of the boot partition. When you reboot add another entry for linux.