Linux/Unix - Dual Boot Win Xp Home & Rh Linux 9.0

Author

Dual Boot Win Xp Home & Rh Linux 9.0

moodswingz32

2005-01-27, 5:01 am

I want to dual boot XP & LINUX. Here's my scenario:

1st HD has XP HOME
2nd HD has LINUX 9.0

When I installed LINUX I was using WIN98. I upgraded to XP HOME and now I can access LINUX on my 2nd hard drive.

What do I need to do so I can dual boot again? Will I have to reinstall LINUX or can I change something on the XP side?

moodswingz32

2005-01-27, 5:03 am

I must edit something.

I'm trying to access Red Het Linux 9.0 on my 2nd hard drive.

compu_net

2005-02-25, 1:29 pm

quote:
Originally posted by moodswingz32
I want to dual boot XP & LINUX. Here's my scenario:

1st HD has XP HOME
2nd HD has LINUX 9.0

When I installed LINUX I was using WIN98. I upgraded to XP HOME and now I can access LINUX on my 2nd hard drive.

What do I need to do so I can dual boot again? Will I have to reinstall LINUX or can I change something on the XP side?

Hi there
first of all: is it true that Linux RedHat can coexist with Windows XP and/or Windows server 2003 in the same computer? And how.

my portable computer has WinXP, Win 2003 sever, and Now I want to add RedHat Enterprise, I am afraid that I may damage the other installations!!!

I appreciate any input here

Thanks in advance

euan50

2005-02-27, 1:59 am

As long as you install red hat into a seperate partition, you can't mess it up. Just make sure that you have a windows startup disk in case anything goes wrong.

I'm not 100% sure but I would assume Red Hat installs the GRUB boot manager into the boot sector of the hard disk. The great thing about GRUB is that even if the configuration is screwed, you should still be able to manually force it to boot your windows installation(s). I would read up on GRUB first of all so you'll know what to do if anything goes wrong.

smrkdown

2005-02-27, 2:10 am

Answer to original question, you have one of two options:

1.
Use the Windows boot manager to choose between either OS at start up. To do this, edit the file "C:\boot.ini" in notepad. Add the correct entry for the first partition on the second hard disk, add a descriptive name like "Red Hat Linux 9.0", and alter the timeout if necessary.

2.
Boot to the Red Hat 9 installation CD, and restore the bootloader from there. You'll want to overwrite the MBR.

Be Careful.

timidipe

2005-03-23, 9:08 am

Compu_net, yes it's true you can dual boot LRH and WinWoteva. My system has been running XP-Pro and RedHat9.2 for approximately 3months now.
The advice is to install Windows first, and your Linux on a seperate partition (what we Windows converts call a seperate Logical partition).

But I'm no GURU. I'm currently trying to workout a problem of my own.

Only yesterday I realised I had a 6GB unallocated Partition (yes, on a HD I've been using months after installing RH!) so I formatted it FAT32 (while in Windows using the beloved Partiton Magic) 'cus I didn't want to find out the hard way if ext3 couldn't read NTFS. On rebooting the system so I could reveng the humiliating defeat I got in the hands of RH's Chess, all I saw was 'GRUB>_'.
And since RH handles boot, I couldn't use Windows either.

I really haven't specifically researched into Bootloaders or Grub as adviced by smrkdown & euan50 (remember I'm less than 3months old using Linux), but I'm hoping someone could save me the trouble of sifting through that thousand and something page RedHat Bible!

Thanks in advance.

smrkdown

2005-03-23, 9:15 am

Hmmm, Windows disk management may have reported a linux ext3 or linux swap partition (that'd be alot of swap) as unallocated, and you may have formatted it.

And Linux has the ability to read from and write to FAT filesystems, but can only read NTFS filesystems and not write to them.

timidipe

2005-03-30, 11:53 am

After re-format/installing LRH, everything was just dandy.

Ok, ok, ya, ya. So I took the yellow talloned chicken way out but hey, got little to loose!

Now I want to zap the XP (due to a lovely DoS attack inherited from Win2kPro- can't access Task Manager) and install XP-sp2 from scratch.

Think I'd best format the Windows Partition within Linux then reboot to a bootable XP CD and do the re-installation.
Perhaps then Bob'd be my uncle

. Except of course as I fear, Windows will tamper with the BootLoader and I'm back to square one.

Whichever way it goes, I'll keep y'all posted.

jombeewoof

2005-08-15, 8:50 pm

quote:
Originally posted by timidipe
After re-format/installing LRH, everything was just dandy.

Ok, ok, ya, ya. So I took the yellow talloned chicken way out but hey, got little to loose!

Now I want to zap the XP (due to a lovely DoS attack inherited from Win2kPro- can't access Task Manager) and install XP-sp2 from scratch.

Think I'd best format the Windows Partition within Linux then reboot to a bootable XP CD and do the re-installation.
Perhaps then Bob'd be my uncle . Except of course as I fear, Windows will tamper with the BootLoader and I'm back to square one.

Whichever way it goes, I'll keep y'all posted.

you can do it the easy way or the hard way

easy way
drop XP (yecch!!) cd in
boot
install XP (remove current C:\ partition)
windows will of course destroy grub but that's ok we will fix it in right now
drop in RH9 (think seriously about upgrading to fedora) disk 1
at prompt type "linux resuce" no quotes
it should search for current linux installs and all that, you should just have to say yes a few times, when it asks to start networking say no
you'll have to chroot (most likely into /mnt/sysimage)
once you've chrooted type
grub-install /dev/hda
it will rewrite the MBR with a working grub, and as long as you overwrote c:\ instead of recreating the partition you won't have to re-edit it to recognize the new XP

hard way
format /dev/hda1 from within linux
boot from XP disk
realise you have to reformat /dev/hda1 because windows doesn't understand /dev/hda1 is anything
follow above instructions

any issues at all
boot from XP cd
choose repair windows install
choose recovery console
fixmbr
exit
will restore the windows MBR (in case grub-install /dev/hda screws something up you will then be able to boot into windows and still get online to find out a better way)

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