If all you're going to install on your hard drive is Linux, then ignore the rest of this section and move onto the next.

If you're like me and believe it's a good idea to format your C: drive and re-install Windows every once in a while, to clear up your congested hard drive, then after backing up all important files, simply restart in MS-DOS mode, enter: fdisk, delete your Primary DOS partition, and recreate it with say 1.5Gb (500Mb if space is tight) less than the size of your hard drive. Reboot your computer with the start-up disk in the floppy drive, enter: format c: to format your new (and now smaller) Primary DOS partition, insert your Windows CD and enter: setup to install Windows. Now you can ignore the rest of this section and move onto the next.

"Right now I have Windows taking up my entire hard drive. Is it possible to put Linux on as well without losing my Windows files and be able to boot into either operating system?"

Yes it is, and I'll show you how. First though, you'll need a partitioning tool. A popular one is Partition Magic, but this costs money. Fortunately FIPS is free, easy to use, and is featured on your Red Hat CD!

Official FIPS Site www.igd.fhg.de/~aschaefe/fips/

For the rest of this section, I'll show you how to use FIPS to create two partitions out of your one big Windows partition, without losing your Windows files. You'll then use this newly created partition to install Linux on to.

FIPS only works with Windows 3.1, 95 and 98 (also OS/2 but first read the FIPS documentation). Also note that the following FIPS guide is minimalistic, and that the documentation that accompanies FIPS contains more detail -- should you feel the need for it.

In Windows, insert a floppy disk that's ok to format, right-click the '3½ Floppy (A:)' icon and select 'Format...'.

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Tick the 'Copy system files' box at the bottom of the dialogue box that appears and select the 'Start' button, to create a 'blank', bootable floppy disk.

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Go to the dosutils directory on your Red Hat Linux CD and copy fips.exe across to the floppy disk.

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Run the Disk Defragmenter in Windows to free a contiguous block on your hard drive for the new partition.

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It goes without saying that you should always backup important files first! If all you have is a floppy drive then get out of the Dark Ages and invest in a good backup device, like an Iomega Zip drive or a CD-writer.

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Restart your computer with the FIPS floppy in the drive. When the disk has finished loading, enter:

fips

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Follow the simple instructions FIPs presents.

Memory allocation error
Cannot load COMMAND, system halted

Just ignore this and reboot.