Hi,

Can someone please direct me to a thread outlining how to install Fedora along side windows XP pointing out the steps and Partitions.

I need to reinstall windows first (I believe), but am having troubles because my linux partitions are already installed!

P.S. I'm loving Fedora!

Shouldn't be necessary to reinstall Windows, depending on your wishes. If you have resized your windows disk, freeing up some hard disk space to facilitate Linux (which you probably already have), it is safe to start the Linux installation.

How is your harddisk currently set up? what are your partitions with their sizes?

Sorry, but I do not know an outline (there most certainly IS one, I just don't know any), so that's why I ask a few items before advising what to do in your case.

Hi,
This may or may not be what you need.
I'm still new to linux, but I think Fedora is part of Red Hat.
www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-manual
check the appendices for install options

Good Luck
John

Sorry about that link
www.r
edhat.com/docs/manuals/linux/RHL-9-manual/install-guide/ch-x86-dualboot.html

HI rhoekstra

My first partition is a 100mb boot. Followed by a 8 Gb /root. I then have a 1gb swap. After that I have an unformated partition of 10gb which I thought I could put windows on. After that I have 2 multimedia partitions in the NTFS format.

Now the problem I have is: when I go to install windows from the CD, the installation freezes up.

So I am now assuming that windows needs a clean partition it can recognise at the front of the drive.

And if that is the case I have to un-install linux and start from scratch with installing windows first.

Though I am not sure what the best way would be!

The way I have it at my machine is:

And then there is a second disk to hold any non-OS data, and that is FAT32 to be accessible by both OSes. No rights system on it, but at least it is accessible.

If you would have had Windows still installed (like I had, before Linux came on it), You could move the WinXP partition a bit back (100Mb) and install linux on hda3, with hda4 as swap.

If you have to install windows anyway, without having linux, you can have Windows partition a disk as big as you want it, perhaps even let 100Mb free at the beginning of the disk (not mandatory though, it's just the idea that the PC will boot at the first partition, and to prevent any booting limitations (over 2GB boot, or over 10GB boot).

If you have Linux already installed and an empty partition ready for windows, I can't tell how Windows should behave... if the last possibility is yours, I can't tell what to do.. if you can still lose the Linux without losing data, I'd suggest doing so..

AFAIK Linux is more flexible in installing itself next to Windows than the other way around... (if anyone can prove me wrong, please do).

Hope I could help with this..

BTW. the drawing is only for demo purposes. If you are using an extended partition, that is fine, but what I take into account:
- Boot partition first
- Windows partition next
- swap on a primary disk
- the last could be the extended to house Linux.

Oh.. and.. I had to 'hide' my linux ReiserFS partition from Windows, as Windows wanted to scandisk the disk .

In case of questions, just ask.

Hi rhoekstra

What you say about "Linux is more flexible in installing" makes alot of sense. The big mistake I made was removing the windows partition first. Because now I'm stuck with the linux and unused partitons, aswell as some media partitions. So now I'll have to delete linux (which I am willing to do) and somehow magically set up my partitions so windows can recognise them in order to install XP first, then Linux second.

Is there some kind of program which can aid me in this small mess that I've got myself in?

Thanks

It doesn't sound good when windows installer 'hangs' itself...

If you make sure you have at least one (unformatted) partition, I doubt Windows setup will break...

Alternatively, you can let Windows format the disk to NTFS at install time, right? Or is Windows setup stuck already before that point? That would make me think that the setup is broken.

rhoekstra

The Setup is now broken at this point. Because Windows doesn't recognise the linux partition at the begining, the installation then halts!

I really need some kind of boot cd that has a program to re-format my hardisk partitions at the beginning of the drive. I'm just unfamiliar at what is available!

Thanks for your reply.

So the Windows installer does not provide means to format the disk which has 'unknown' patitions on it?

Anyway.. What you could do is put in the first Fedora CD and boot from it with the start command 'linux rescue'. This way Linux will come in 'rescue mode', providing a shell on which you can do an 'fdisk /dev/hda' (or whatever the disk is). You should be able to delete all present partitions there...

If the whole disk can be cleaned (eg. no data on it that is valuable to you), just remove all partitions, recreate the partitions as you want it to be, but keep them empty, so no filesystem on it.

Try the windows installer again and see if you get to choose the right partition to install Windows on.

Good luck

rhoekstra

I'll give it a shot this week-end.

Fdisk command is not recognised by version of Fedora - Sucks hey?
Though the man Fdisk is there. (It doesn't make sense)

Just curious, do you know of any Hardrive management programs that run under Fedora?

Besides Fdisk

Thanks

Disk druid is there as well...

are you consequent about 'Fdisk' ? the command is 'fdisk' (no capital).

I cannot imagine fdisk not being available to the rescue mode of Fedora, as I have used it in the past myself (for earlier versions, not Core3... it could be a change, but I doubt it)..

Still... good luck..

rhoekstra

I finally had some success!

fdisk does work, but only under linux rescue.

So far I have installed windows, and re-sized my partion leaving 70GB spare. I intend to have my linux partitions and then 2 media partitions. Would you recommend the media partitions to be fat32 as I will be accessing them via both OS?

Should my next step be to install linux and allowing disk druid to automatically set my partitions up, or should I do it manually. If I do it manually, then how do I then move the boot partition in front of the windows partition?

This is the stage I'm likely to stuff up. So I'll wait for feedback before continuing.

Thanks mate

Being on ski holidays, I couldn't reply... so here it is..

With no OS installed yet, it's easiest to create the partitions, ready to install.

If Windows is installed already, there is no man overboard. How I did it, was to move the partition (NTFS WinXP) using PartitionMagic (not free). If someone can fill me in on how this is to be done with a Linux tool that is capable to move a WinXP partition, that would be great. but for now, I don't see another option than using PM.

Once you have moved the partion about 100Megs from the start, you can make it a partition with the Linux fdisk. Realize how many partitions you will fit on your system. any more than 4 will make using extended partions mandatory.

I'd suggest it like this:

Primary partition 1 (hda0) : Linux ext3 boot partition (Size: about 100 Megs)
Primary partition 2 (hda1) : WinXP NTFS partition (Size: about 15 Gigs or whatever you feel comfortable with)
Primary partition 3 (hda2) : Extended Partition (Size: remainder of the disk)
-> Logical partition 1 (hda5) : Linux ext3 root partition (Size: about 15 Gigs or whatever you feel comfortable with)
-> Logical partition 2 (hda6) : Linux swap partition (using 'mkswap /dev/hda6', once the partition is created) (Size: about twice your physical memory, a gig or two won't hurt today's harddisks, right)
-> Logical partition 3 (hda7) : Fat32 data storage drive (Size: remainder of Extended partition).

I suggest Fat32 for the data storage, as long as security is not a high standard on your machine. Fat32 does not have any rights management on it, just be aware of that. Besides that, it is the best file system that is fully supported on both platforms, so you have access to the data storage from both OSes which makes it easy in use.

I hope this made a bit sense to you, if not, respond to ask.

Hi,
The answer to your question is I think in the fedora core 3 release notes on one of the cds, if you have fedora installed on the mozilla firefox home page.

--hope this helps the partition sizes are quite a ways down the page

I am new to linux. I have a dual boot OS with Win 98. I am getting familiar with Gnome.
How do I move a downloaded hardware driver for linux from my Windows partition to Linux?
I need it to drive my modem in linux so I can get on-line in linux.