At the moment I'm dual booting RH7.2 and Win98 on my machine at home booting up using GRUB. My intention is to triple boot Windows XP Pro with the aforementioned operating systems. whats the best way to do this? I think I should resize the Win98 partition and make space the overweight XP. Should I need to re-install Redhat or do you think the Linux partitions will be safe?. This is my foray into the XP experience and I'm nervous (Wonder Why?) Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Well, the Linux partitions should not be dangered as long you don't let WinXP touch them... you just need to have a bootdisk get Lilo back, since WinXP overwrites the MBR. Just add winXP to the boot-menu and rerun lilo.

you can boot all them through the win xp boot menu

Yes, but I have found it to be easier if you add them all to lilo instead. Editing lilo becomes easier the more it is done though, so I am afraid I don't know which version would be easier for a first timer. But since you are on the best linux site there is, you are in luck. There are tons of other posts on how to do it either way, and you can try them both if you'd like. See which one you prefer and go with it.

MasterC is right on.

I second that you let lilo do all the grunt work at boot.

The best way is there's no best way. :P What I would recommend is you shrink w98, install xp and LASTLY install Linux.

FAT32 being first is the easiest. xp can be NTFS. Linux should better be ext2 for starter.

That's not good practice. Cuz sometime in the future you'll have a 2nd thought about the structure. So create a FAT32 as extended at the last slot. Here's an idea:

20gb HD, maxtor what else?
hda1, 5gb, w98, fat32, primary
hda2, 5gb, xp, ntfs, primary
hda3, 5gb, linux, ext2, primary
hda4, 5gb, d:/temp/my doc, fat32, extended

Save all Linux & Windows files to hda4. This will do the job nicely for most everyone. I've invented a better file management, but it wouldn't be good for everyone.

Keep in mind xp will eat 1gb+ for Windows only. Most Linux distros will require less then 2.5gb, except for Pro & Power Pack editions. Still have room for office suite & games.

Recent distros will identify xp no prob and you just have to rename it to something that makes sense for the boot menu (lilo).

Cheers Jetblackz! I did pretty much exactly what you said last night. Using PartitionMagic 7 I shrunk the Win98 partition and then Installed XP. Then I installed RH7.2 on my secondary hard disk making sure I installed GRUB on the MBR on /dev/hda Things are working and I can see and access all OS's. There is, however, one little problem. It's nothing serious but I have noticed that when I try to access Win XP from GRUB my machine reboots, wheres when I try to access Win 98 from GRUB it then goes straight into the old style NT boot loader from where I can access either 98 or XP. Not a major problem, but it does seem kinda weird! I have since edited GRUB and all is working so I can't complain. One last thing: I have edited my fstab file so that I can view data files on my Win 98 partition from boot up. How do I get it so that I can see my Win XP data files from boot up. XP is formatted using NTFS so it obviously won't be 'vfat'. Cheers All!

No sweat.

Boot to Linux, login as root, open terminal
mkdir /mnt/wxp
pico /etc/fstab
add this line at the end
/dev/hda2 /mnt/wxp ntfs auto,ro,user,umask=0 0 0
hit Tab instead of SPACEBAR 3 times except for between 0 0 0
CTRL-X, Y
mount /mnt/wxp
ls /mnt/wxp

It'll auto mount on next boot-up. If you don't want that, rename "auto" to "noauto". Shall we retire?

As for the little annoyance, it's normal. XP writes boot file on 9* partition.