Re: Need to install Windows 2000 from scratch to HDDs with Debian/Linux

From: Joe (joe_at_jretrading.com)
Date: 01/17/05 

Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2005 20:43:20 +0000

In message <jfudncwkYvBAlXHcRVn-rg@mminternet.net>, ANTant@zimage.com
writes
>Hello!
>
>I have Debian (Kernel 2.6.8) installed currently sharing two old IDE
>HDDs. What's the best way to install a new Windows 2000 SP4 (all
>updates) installation without messing up my current Linux EXT3
>partitions? I have PartitionMagic v8.01, but I don't know if it is safe
>to use (e.g., resize the existing partitions). I have never done this
>(newbie) before so I am scared. :(
>
>Thank you in advance. :)

More information needed. What partitions and mount points do you
currently use? Ideally, we need the print outputs of fdisk for the
drives, plus the output of df. You may not need to resize any
partitions, some copying plus use of fdisk and tweaking of /etc/fstab
may be enough. OK, this is a bit scary, but not as much as resizing
Linux partitions with Windows tools. You should certainly backup all
data before you start. One of the live CDs (Knoppix etc.) is useful for
doing this kind of work, as you cannot do it from inside Debian. Tom's
Root and Boot floppy (tomsrtbt) is fine for this, but it's a bit
unfriendly if you haven't used it before.

A W2K installation will need 2G minimum for itself, plus whatever you
are doing with it, say 5G total. *It must have the use of the first
primary partition it can see (NTFS, FAT or FAT32), of at least a
megabyte, on /dev/hda*. This may be the 5G partition if this is
convenient, or a separate one. I use a FAT partition of about 20MB for
this, as it contains the Windows boot.ini file, which may need to be
edited from outside Windows, and NTFS is not a good idea here. The main
W2K partition needs to be NTFS to make use of file permissions and some
other features.

Windows really ought to go on a multi-boot system first, as it is likely
to trample the Master Boot Record of /dev/hda. The NT variants are much
more polite than the domestic (Win9x) types, so if W2K finds the MBR
already in use by something that isn't a Win9x or DOS, it may not
overwrite it. I'm not sure, but you need to be prepared to re-run your
Linux boot manager (lilo or grub) which means you need a rescue floppy
or CD. You could instead use whatever distro you used to move the
partitions, but you need to know how to do that, whereas this is exactly
what a rescue disc for a particular installation is designed to do. It's
not difficult either way, but try it before the W2K installation. You
also need to edit and re-run the boot manager to include the new W2K
installation in its start-up menu.

It is possible to do it the other way around, to let W2K have the MBR
and control the boot, and to edit C:\boot.ini to include the Linux
installation, but I've never done this and can't offer advice. 

-- 
Joe

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