I've just received my new 6400 (T7400, 2GB, 160GB, Vista Home Premium) and I'd like to install CentOS 5 too. With big surprise (looking at the partition table first and then, googling, http://www.goodells.net/dellrestore/index.htm) I found that Dell is used to use the whole of the four partitions (see the url above for details).
Did you remove any of these partitions (e.g. the Media Direct one)? Could you share your experience? I'd like to preserve the base functionalities without preventing me to use CentOS 5 as the master OS.
I removed all partitions and reinstalled from scratch. My machine came with XP Home and I replaced it with XP pro on a small partition (10 GB).
If I remember correctly, you can reinstall the dell software and it will only wipe the first partition (sda1), but that only applies to XP.
Let me know if you have any other doubts :)
Gabriel
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