OK, Norm, you're making progress, which is commendable. Focus on the\r\ntask and the solution.

\r\nOk, first things first. Windows has to be installed before Linux, or\r\nelse it may mess up the Linux partition and mess up LILO or GRUB.\r\n

Well, if you're going to insist on multi-boot, yes. IIRC, it's\r\nWin9x or ME, then NT/2K/XP, then GNU/Linux, if these are the platforms\r\nyou're planning on running.

\r\nFirst thing I did was update my ABit VH6-II BIOS to Ver 7F for large HD\r\nsupport. Onboard Ultra ATA100 Controller works fine now, sees all\r\n160Gigs in CMOS setup.\r\n

This should be sufficient. Since the controller's UDMA, you should\r\nsee the disk's full performance as well. This is based on my\r\nunderstanding of the whole current IDE/ATA drive technology, which is\r\nsketchy at best (both my understanding, and the technology).

\r\nI tried Win98 FDISK, it reported 21Gigs, \r\n

Known issue. Remember: once you're past 2 GiB, or hell, 512 MiB,\r\nyou're into the patch and band-aid school of PC technology. Standard\r\n"barriers" are: 512 MiB, 2.1 GiB, 3.2 GiB, 4.2 GiB, 7.9 GiB, 33.8 GiB,\r\nand 167 GiB, or thereabouts (most of this from the GNU/Linux Large Disk\r\nHOWTO). In the case of Win98, see this KB article: [link|http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=http://support.microsoft.com:80/support/kb/articles/Q243/4/50.ASP&NoWebContent=1|ScanDisk\r\nErrors on IDE Hard Disks Larger Than 32 GiB]. Your use of 3rd party\r\nutilities is probably the Right Thing[tm].

\r\nI tried XP setup, it reported\r\n137Gigs. Bah! I finally went and used the WD Data Lifeguard Tools and\r\nformatted and partitioned it with that. I made the reserved Linux\r\npartitions "FAT32" for now, I figure CFDISK can change them later or the\r\nLinux setup can if I keep them empty.\r\n

\r\nWin98 install is going fine, XP Pro will be later, and then OS /2, and\r\nthen Red Hat and maybe Debian. After I read the Howtos Karsten kindly\r\npointed me to, that is. :)\r\n

You're welcome ;-)

\r\nI am posting this from a spare machine that wouldn't take Linux, but\r\nwould take Windows. This one locked up in the middle of a Red Hat\r\ninstall, the other one had media errors but the motherboard eventually\r\nwent bad (I'm thinking the IDE controllers were failing, hence the Media\r\nErrors?).\r\n

Any reason this system can't remain your dedicated legacy MS Windows\r\nsystem? My experience is that it is far better to keep separate systems\r\nfor separate OSs rather than to dual-boot them. [link|http://www.tightvnc.com/|TightVNC] (Free Software) makes\r\nremote-accessing pretty much anything a snap.