First, get to XP and Disk Manager via Administrative Tools | Computer Management | Disk management.
If the 10g partition is really there and formatted properly, it will show up as an unknown partition. If XP can see this partition as any other type, Windows has complete control of it.
Third Party tools don't really know enough about both Operating Systems to do their jobs seamlessly.
What you should have done was to format it with Disk Manager in Windows, after creating it somehow, as FAT and then simply deleted it.
Thereafter, you let Linux install take care of the Linux Partition. By the way, didn't you also need a small swap partition?
Compaq has a special key to find out the recovery partition, I forget which one, but it's in Compaq docs and at Compaq site. The Compaq backup partition is sacred, unless you really know what you're doing and have all of the required Compaq install and fix disks, now in CD form.
Mandrake can't find the space because it is a Windows space. Windows should never ever be able to seen any Linux partition, with the one exception perhaps of ZipSlack. Windows will try to write to a partition that it has no knowledge of and thus corrupt it. Which is basically why while you can maybe repartition with magic and others, you can't then define the partition type as Linux. You need to take the extra steps of of deleting the partition, reformatting FAT, then deleting it from Windows Disk Manager.
You should also be able to boot with the boot disk for Mandrake, if you have one, and if the partition is dead meat, it will tell you so. If it can boot to it, it will probably have to fsck, but the next boot to Windows will just corrupt it again.
Lilo is apparently now in your MBR instead of NT [yes, XP is just NT with a new name and version].
However, Windows keeps copies of its original MBR and partitioning tables at mid volume and end of drive. It can also check on these for restores, etc.. That may be why it thinks the partitions are overlapping, and, fixmbr will change everything.
You need to really get down to backing up the files he needs first, however you can do that. I don't suggest using standard backup, but try instead to copy the files as files to another computer hopefully on a home network. Then get them to a CDR or DVDR.
You will need the Compaq Install disks, etc., if you run into problems, and will most likely need the XP install CD's.
Compaq initializes the pcmcia type modem and ethernet card slots. You may lose them if you don't have the Compaq install and/or repair disks.
Tell us what Disk Manager says about your disk: how many partitions, types, any unknown partition spaces, where they are on the disk, beginning, middle, end, and what does Windows say the complete disk size is?
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by: ridPosted on 2005-04-01 at 22:15:08ID: 13686721
The problem may be the use of third party drive tools.
Normally, a Linux installation (Fedora Core, SuSE) will offer to resize the existing windows partition at install time and those tools run very well, AFAIK. The Linux install will include a boot loader (usually GRUB) that handles the dual-boot situation.
You'll have to defrag the hard drive in windows before doing this, I think, to leave some useable empty space for the Linux partition(s).
I think you should be able to restore windows by using tools like "fixmbr" and/or "fixboot" if you can't boot windows.
If you can boot to windows, do a defrag and then try to load Linux, using whatever tools for disk management comes with the distro. I can recommend the SuSE personal 9.1 distro for just getting a taste of Linux, if that is what this is about.
Doing some kind of backup of important data is a matter of course in these cases. I wouldn't ever try anything like this without having a fresh backup lying around.
/RID