My windows install was giving me a lot of grief today, (kept freezing while formatting the hard drive) so I popped in a Mandrake 8.0 disc just to see if the install would complete.<BR><BR>Anyways, now ...

If you erase the partition containing /boot, you will break GRUB. Boot off a XP recovery CD and run fixmbr to replace the MBR before running Partition Magic.

Automatic partitioning is safe and fast for standard installs—choose it if unsure. Manual partitioning is needed if you dual-boot, use LVM, or want separate filesystems for different partitions. Plan ...