Re: 1st Partition Linux, 2nd Partition Windows?

From: sung (designtists_at_gmx.at)
Date: 05/11/04 

Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 00:38:34 +0200

Well, after reading your description I followed your advice to the
letter and ... bought a new hard disk on which I installed Redhat 9.
Very uncomplicated so far and here comes the big "but"...

the boot loader configured itself, so no problem there.

The interesting part is:

My mainbord has an onboard raid controller. The harddisk used to be
connected with it instead of the ide controller.

Prior to installing unix i pulled the plug (of my old harddisk) and
connected it to the ide-controller. i did not think it would work but
windows started up without any problems.

Then I installed linux on the new harddisk and it worked fine.

Today I tried to boot windows xp and it simply won't work.

I added the entry of grub.conf. Perhaps someone can help me.

title Windows 2000
         rootnoverify (hd1,0)
         chainloader +1
title Windows XP
         rootnoverify (hd1,1)
         chainloader +1

Thank you.
sung

Benoit Morrissette wrote:
> On Wed, 05 May 2004 23:13:35 +0200, sung <designtists@gmx.at> wrote:
>
>
>>Hello,
>>
>>As I said before I'm planing to install Linux. Now I face an interesting
>>situation, which is not described in the official documentation I found.
>>
>>My system is set up as a dual boot system: 1st partition win2k, 2nd
>>partition winxp. 1st is systempartition, 2nd is startpartition.
>
>
> No problem. I have 4 primary partitions in that order: Win98, WinXP,
> Linux and swap. The first three are bootables.
>
>
>>What I want to do:
>>Deleting the first partition, (which i think not possible, since it is
>>also the systempartition and contains necessary files for
>>windows-startup, no matter which one) and then installing linux instead.
>
>
> Yes, but make BACKUPS of your important data first! mistakes do
> happen, you know...
>
>>Q1: Has anyone experience with an installation like this? (the second
>>partition should remain untouched - or more importantly unharmed - by
>>the installation).
>>Q2: I know it's the wrong place to ask, but maybe someone can tell me if
>>it is possible to make the 2nd partition of a harddisk start- as well as
>>systempartition for windows (if you feel offended by beeing asked
>>windows questions here accept my excuses)?
>
>
> Yes to all but is is a complicated and delicate process. Only ONE
> mistake and POOF!!! Everything's gone!
>
> The very best way to do this is to get a second hard disk! Hey, they
> are cheap today and the process is so complicated, ( so many
> possibilities of errors ) that it is not worth it. I did it once and
> i wont do it again ( took me almost one week to get it right ).
>
> Look below; for the last hour i've tried to explain the process and
> yet i realise that the procedure below is (very) incomplete. Do not
> read below and DON'T TRY THIS AT HOME!
>
> If
>
> Don't read below this line....
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Here is my advice:
> First, WinXP needs some files to reside on a FAT (DOS or Win)
> partition: ntdetect.com, bootfont.bin, suhdlog.dat, autoexec.bat,
> config.sys, msdos.sys, bootsect.dos, io.sys, ntldr and boot.ini.
>
> Notice that my first part. is Win98 so the files autoexec.bat, io.sys,
> msdos.sys, config.sys and bootsect.dos may not be present on your
> system. As i do not have Win2K, i do not know the exact details.
>
> So, you set-up your preferred Win. to show hidden files and you backup
> the files above to a diskette.
>
> Make sure that you have a bootable diskette from DOS 6.22, Win95 or
> 98.
>
> ( incomplete..)
>
> You will need to replace the first partition by three other ones:
>
> 1- a small size FAT 16 DOS partition of say 512k to 1meg. On that
> one you will store perhaps DOS 6.22 and a handfull of hard disk
> utilities to repair your system if something goes wrong. That
> partition should be bootable.
>
> 2- Main Linux partition, the biggest one
>
> 3- the Linux swap partition. I think it is the same size as the
> amount of your RAM but i'm not sure.
>
> the 4th partition will be the already existing WinXP.
>
> You can use the very good "Ranish Partition Manager" to do the job.
> It has a function to save and restore the boot sector of the hard disk
> and it can fit on one 1.44m disk. Read the documentation CAREFULLY
> and practice a little bit with it before installing Linux.
>
>
> CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION CAUTION:
>
> The Linux Boot manager will replace the WinXP one without asking but
> it will save it on the first (DOS ) partition. On the next boot, GRUB
> will offer you the choice of booting Linux or DOS. If you choose DOS,
> GRUB will redirect the boot process to the old boot manager ie. WinXP.
> Now it is the XP Boot Manager that must give you the choice of booting
> on the first (DOS 6.22) or fourth partition. To do that you must
> first copy the files from DOS to the first partition THEN edit the
> boot.ini file of WinXP to read like this:
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> [boot loader]
> timeout=30
> default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
> [operating systems]
> C:\="DOS"
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Pro2"
> /fastdetect
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Pro3"
> /fastdetect
> multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Windows XP Pro4"
> /fastdetect
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> ( well, because of word wrapping, the /fastdetect has been shifted on
> it's own line; it should not... )
>
> Notice that only one of the WinXP lines will be good but because of
> know wich one yet. Most likely it will be the fourth one...
>
> (incomplete...)
>
>
>
>>Thanks in advance
>>sung
>
>
>
> Have a nice day!
>
> Benoît...

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Two new installations
    ... Seriously, try installing. ... > I installed Sure to the 12Gb partition which was the second partition. ... > just did a warm boot whenever it failed. ... a bad battery for the BIOS) but you insist on Linux. ...
    (alt.os.linux.suse)
  • Re: Format Hard Drive
    ... I installed Linux Fedora tonight with no ... > first before installing linux, if you want two operating systems on the ... I'm getting a message that says I need to create a partition ... bootloader, whether it be lilo or grub, can boot the windows partition if ...
    (comp.os.linux.setup)
  • Re: D3 Linux on VMWare Server ?
    ... Has anyone successfully run D3 on a VMware Linux virtual machine? ... be an issue with D3 not finding the RAW partition needed to host the ... The virtual disk file is sitting on the host machine's hard disk. ... It seems to not like the disk setup - the same setup is on the real machine and I cannot work out how to move on. ...
    (comp.databases.pick)
  • Re: D3 Linux on VMWare Server (and a real machine) ?
    ... Has anyone successfully run D3 on a VMware Linux virtual machine? ... be an issue with D3 not finding the RAW partition needed to host the ... think it is in total, direct, control of the physical hard disk. ... I know someone suggested running 7.5 but doing that would result in a lengthy account restore and manual creation of a lot of accounts - so I want to avoid doing this if at all possible. ...
    (comp.databases.pick)
  • Re: Setting up Suse dual boot with an XP NTFS partition
    ... FAT partition where windoze is installed and I can see the 2 other NTFS ... probably still have it until I learn more about Linux for my every day ... not that installing NTFS would make much of a difference ... >> SUSE distro with xp booting from an NTFS partition. ...
    (comp.os.linux.setup)