Big Problem With Mandrake Installation

[psx1337]

Meh...I went to install Mandrake 9.1 today. Everything went smoothly and seemed fine until I went to run Windows [but I will get to that in a minute]. I have a Dell (yuck)...but the specs are decent. Anyway, I re-formatted the comp at one point a while back.. When I did this it somehow made a C Partition and D Partition Now, the C partition was only about 30 Megabytes out of an entire 80GB HD. How this happened? Again I really have no clue.
So when installing Linux it of course needs its own partition. I told it to resize the D partition which is huge. I dividied it by designating the last quarter for Linux. It DID tell me that this is a dangerous process and that I should back up my data. Well, I've heard that one before and I foolishley ignored it thinking nothing would happen. Linux installed well! And I must say I'm very impressed. But, when I go to the OS selection screen upon bootup, I need to select DOS rather than windows to get to my Windows OS selection screen. And Then I select Windows XP (I have 2 installed) and it flashes a "Blue Screen of Death" at me for a ninosecond and then reboots. Just great....;\ I'm not farmiliar with linux too well. Now I went and reformatted my D partition. As I am typing this now I realize I should have used some kind of computer browser in Linux to extract the data from the D partition. Well, too late now. :P . But I am thouroughly pissed at the horrible partition division done by the installer. Oh well, I just lost TONS of pictures and a few important documents. I guess it serves me right for not listening to their warnings but I was so anxious to try out Linux! If you have any Idea what went wrong, or simply want to comment on my stupidity go ahead and post. I plan on getting a partition manager and wiping out everything. I will then create 2 partitions and divide the HD in "half"...Any help on this would be great. [/b]

[l_Kriss]

well, stuff like that happen sometimes! example is when i partitoned my hdd because I wanted to give netBSD a try, and I deleted the whole thing. 10 gb of self-ripped ogg vorbis files and some schoolwork got lost

So comfort yourself with that this has happened to others! But, maybe you should wait some weeks with installing windows, so you get to see how Linux is as an everyday OS?
Maybe it will end with that you throw the windows cd in the trash? I did

[Ice]

Is there particular reason why you had 2 windows partitions? What I would suggest doing is first reinstalling XP on one partition. Then resize the partition and add another partition for Linux. For the most part, the Mandrake installation wizard will do pretty much exactly what you need to do.

I've been using for some time now and I still can't totally get away from Windows. I have to use alot of Adobe and Macromedia products that I can't find equals for in Linux. I could use Wine, but I just haven't tackled that project yet. I hope this helps some.

[psx1337]

Is there particular reason why you had 2 windows partitions? What I would suggest doing is first reinstalling XP on one partition. Then resize the partition and add another partition for Linux. For the most part, the Mandrake installation wizard will do pretty much exactly what you need to do.

I've been using for some time now and I still can't totally get away from Windows. I have to use alot of Adobe and Macromedia products that I can't find equals for in Linux. I could use Wine, but I just haven't tackled that project yet. I hope this helps some.

Again, I have no idea how I ended up with two Windows partitions the first time I re-formatted this computer. ;\ Oh well. As of now I'm back home (typed the original message away from my home) typing this on Micro$oft Internet explorer on my Windows partitions. =P. I used a partition assisting program to help me do some deleting of that C partition which was that useless 30mb partition. It just had some truncated Unreal Tournament 2003 on it. ... Ah well. I designated about 40GB for linux. Right now I'm downloading the 2nd CD and I will soon use "ISO Recorder" from the XP powertoys to burn it. Thanks for the help/input. Have a good night, guys.