Question : How to install Windows XP without screwing up my partition scheme?

The installation wizard of Windows XP doesn't recognize my partitions, I think because my hard drives are too large (2 x 750 gb), in the wizard all I can do is format the entire drive and install XP on that. Making a small partition (50 gb) and placing it at the start of the hard drive (sda1) doesn't change anything.

I have a lot of stuff on both drives, an encrypted partition and OSes, so I don't want to format either drive to install XP. Any ideas how to install XP without formatting the entire drive?

I have an old Dell setup disc for Windows XP Pro with no SP, which runs the standard windows XP setup, so no specialized Dell setup wizard. My drives are SATA.

Answer : How to install Windows XP without screwing up my partition scheme?

The problem is simple: You have an XP installation disk with no service packs ==> thus it only supports 28-bit logical block addressing. This limits your hard drive size to 137GB (128GB in "computer-ese").

You simply need to create a slipstreamed XP install disk ==> you need at least SP1, but I'd do it with SP2 or SP3. THEN the installation disk will work fine.

Just follow the instructions here ... http://www.winsupersite.com/showcase/windowsxp_sp2_slipstream.asp