Here is the full story (of my most recent attempt).
1. In struggling to get Partition Magic to do anything, I deleted all partitions except partition 1, which contains Windows XP Pro
and Partition Magic.
Partition 2, which contained Boot Magic, was deleted.
[In my last iteration, extended partition 2 contains logical partitions 5,6,7. Partition 5 "will contain" Boot Magic.]
When I then tried to uninstall Boot Magic from the Control Panel menu, the uninstall failed with the same error message
which I listed in a previous note. The Windows installer script refused to change anything.
2. To remove the Boot Magic item from the Control Panel menu, I used Revo uninstaller.
Revo also deleted the Boot Magic registry entries.
3. Per the special Boot Magic uninstall instructions,
I removed the Boot Menu items from %temp%,
and I removed the Boot Magic entries from C:/Program Files/Install...
4. Now, every record of Boot Magic that I know of has been removed.
But somewhere, the Windows installer still has a record of where Boot Magic was installed.
The Boot Magic installer executes a .msi script which finds that record,
and refuses to "re-install" Boot Magic.
5. The name of the original partition 2 was "F:BOOT MAGIC" (FAT16).
When I was ready to re-install Boot Magic, I created a new partition 5, also named "F:BOOT MAGIC" (FAT16).
6. In one of the iterations through this process, I deleted all partitions except partition 1, and recreated
the partitions with Windows XP Pro Disk Management (not Linux fdisk). PM still complained about the partitions,
and Boot Magic still refused to install.
7. The only thing that gave me some control over this process was a Boot Magic rescue disk.
Even though Boot Magic would not install, it was happy to create a rescue disk for me.
With the rescue disk, I was able to set the active partition to 1, to boot Windows XP Pro,
or set the active partition to 6, to boot Fedora Linux.
8. The GRUB Linux loader is not installed in the Master Boot Record.
It is installed in partition 6, but the installation is not correct.
The only consequence is -- GRUB does not read commands from its configuration file,
and I have to manually type in four GRUB commands to complete the booting of Fedora Linux.
P.S. Norton priority case ID was assigned to this problem.
They kept promising me that their "research" department would call me back.
I stayed home all day for four days waiting for that call -- it never came.
<<Removed support case ID number from the post.>>
Message Edited by TomV on 03-27-2009 12:34 AM