Try gparted

http://gparted.sourceforge.net

or pmagic

http://partedmagic.com/wiki/PartedMagic.php

To partition your drive there are more linux user friendly.

Ok, an update: I have reformatted the 80 Gb c:/ drive as FAT32; the whole of it.

Ubuntu now goes further and into Demo mode, but still won't install to the hard disk and won't state what the problem is.

Fedora 8. Goes into the set-up but stalls at this point:

"Installation requires partitioning your hard drive. By default, a partitioning layout is chosen which is reasonable for most users. You can chose to use this or create your own."

[I go with the default and click 'next']

It does appear to recognise the hard drive at this point, as it appears ticked in the dialoge box as 76317 Mb ATA ST...... etc.

Next, this warning comes up:
"You have chosen to remove all Linux partitions (and all data from them) on the following drives: /dev/sda - are you sure you want to do this?

[click 'yes']

Response: "Error partitioning - could not allocate requested partitions: could not allocate partitions as primary partitions. Not enough space left to create partition for /boot."

[click on OK (the only option)

Response: "The following errors occurred with your partitioning: You have not defined a root partition (/), which is required for the installation of Fedora to continue. This can happen if there is not enough space on your hard drive(s) for the installation. Press OK to choose a different partitioning option." At which point I go back to the first screen.

Any ideas?

I've just noticed this edition is Fedora "for i386". Is that okay with the Celeron M?

Thanks again.

CC.

If you can get to a command prompt (I believe that Fedora offers a rescue cd option on boot) you could try partitioning the drive using cfdisk or fdisk. That will leave you with at least one linux partition and the cd should be able to work on it.

Yes,that's.ok.I think your problem is very simple;you don't know what root partition is,you don't know how to create one,you don't know what swap is,you don't know what GRUB is,you don't know what MBR is and you don't know what ext2 or 3 or 4 or raiserfs is.If that is correct,let us know,so we can help you.

This is for a text base install of ubuntu, it may be worth a go.

http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/

Less than 50% (see above).

THanks for your input anyway.

CC.

Hello Clueless,

Well, it appears there are some who want you to know how much they know, but won't accept that sometimes a step by guide is what some of us need.
I won't try to confuse the issue, but I will tell you that when Fedora complains that you did not assign a root partition is simply as you to place which partition the system (root) files will be written to. In your case, you simply enter a "/" (without the quotes). / in Linux means the root partition (top of the file tree, because linux treats EVERYTHING as a file, even hardware). If you decide to try Fedora again, try assigning this (/) when it asks, since you will only have one large partition on the disk. You adjust that later once you get your operating system installed and are able to learn a little more about Linux.

I might also add that one LiveCD that is extremely easy to install right from the desktop of the LiveCD is PCLinuxOS. It will graphically handle everything for you. Very good at HW recognition and setup. Give it a try if you can.

Hope this helps

Bob

Did I see this correctly that you formatted it all to fat32? reformat to ext3 and try again.

Of course, Fat32 is a windows thing. You may as well strip the drive of all partitions and do the partitioning while you are installing. Linux can read from / write to FAT but it won't install on it (with a few rare exceptions).

have you enabled your primary partition to boot? Use 'fsdisk' and change the first partition to 'boot'.

OK, I noticed your problem with Fedora. You select the option to remove all partitions, rather then just Linux partitions. That should do the trick.

I guess that was about me.When did I said that?
Did I confused anybody? I think that you don't understand what getting relevant informations to make it easier for all of us,means.

OP,If you don't want to use entire hard disk,and my advice to you is;don't use entire HD,then follow this steps;
Choose manual(or custom) configuration when asked about partitioning,then create new partition and enter / as a mount point(you will be asked to do so).About swap,you must create swap partiotion too,about 1,5xRAM space will be OK.Format both partitions; / as ext3 and swap as swap.MBR is relevant if you want to dual boot,or have 3 or 4 OS-s.If so,install Windows first,if you want to have them,then Linux boot manager(GRUB)on the MBR and if you want to have other Linux systems,install their boot manager on the root(/) partition and add them to the primary Linux grub.menu.lst file which you can find in /boot/grub.

Ok, here's the latest update:

I reformatted the whole hard drive as ext3 and carried out the other suggestions from
Bob and AlanRI with the result that the computer HAS finally recognised the HDD! That's the good news. It went into installation vigorously writing lots of data to the hard disk. This went on for about 20 minutes to the point where the progress report said: "568 of 1103 packages completed" - and the installation just hung. Mouse pointer still moves, but that's all. :-(

What's the problem, do you think? I checked the installation disk media with the start-up option and it reported no errors.

CC.

Hi Clueless,

That has happened to me before and it has always been because of something wrong with the CD (i.e. bad burn, scratch, or just dirty.) However, if that is not the problem, this could be a difficult one to track down. Try it again after making sure the cd/dvd is ok, md5 sum is checked properly and the drive is clean. If it does the same thing at the same spot in the installation, then it is probably some piece of software it is trying to install. This has also happened to me before with Fedora and I solved it by inastalling a minimal amount of software in the initial install and then added what I wanted later. I know it's a pain, but you might also just try to do another burn with brand new cd/dvd.

Hope this helps

Bob

[QUOTE=BobNutfield;3101860]Hi Clueless,

That has happened to me before and it has always been because of something wrong with the CD (i.e. bad burn, scratch, or just dirty.) However, if that is not the problem, this could be a difficult one to track down. Try it again after making sure the cd/dvd is ok, md5 sum is checked properly and the drive is clean. If it does the same thing at the same spot in the installation, then it is probably some piece of software it is trying to install. This has also happened to me before with Fedora and I solved it by inastalling a minimal amount of software in the initial install and then added what I wanted later. I know it's a pain, but you might also just try to do another burn with brand new cd/dvd.

Hope this helps

So do I!
Thanks, Bob. I'll give your suggestions a try and see what transpires.

One other thing I've noticed very early into the boot sequence is line of text saying "Cannot control address line A20" - it's only there for a flash and then the rest of the boot report fills the screen. I just wondered if that message means anything to anyone and whether it might be part of the problem.

CC.