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 ...

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.