Hi, I have a question regarding dual-boot. I just got Mandrake 9.2 and want it dual-booted with Windows 2000 Professional. Does someone have experience with these 2 OS'es combined ? 'Cause I wanna know for sure my Windows installation won't get f*ck*d up before I install Mandrake 9.2

Thank already.

A

Welcome to LQ.

All that will happen is that you will overwrite your bootloader with grub or lilo. Mandrake should pick up your Win2k install and add a bootloader entry but if it doesn't you can boot into Mandrake and edit the config files by hand.

I've installed Linux a couple times. Once with Mandrake 8.1 and once with SuSe 8.0. When you install a new OS your master boot record gets rewritten to the newest os that you install. During the install of linux it asks you if you want run Lilo or Grub. These utilities work similar to XOSL (xtended opererating system loader). At startup it will prompt you to select which OS you would like to load. I've noticed that during installation redhat actually prompts you to set the default OS that loads while Mandrake and SuSe automatically assume that Linux will load by default. The worst thing that could happen is if you overwrite your windows partition. If you don't have much experience with Linux (like me) go ahead and partition the space under windows using a handy utility such as Partition Magic. It works great it formats Linux partions so that when you install the Linux OS it auto detects the Linux file system. Hope this helps. I'm a newbie too and I need as much help as possible.

-Mr54mk

I can't speak for 2000, but I installed Mdk 9.2 onto a computer with an existing XP install, and it was absolutely trouble free.

Just remember to back up your info first, just in case, and defrag the disk before installing.

Good luck!

Thanks for the welcome and the tips guys. Will go and make a backup of my important files and install Mandrake tonight or tomorrow.
I will let you know how it went.

Thanks again

Yeah, it worked I formatted my secondary drive and partioned it so that linux has some part of the drive and windows has another part. And it works fine I can boot either Linux or Windows and both the OS'es work and see my secondary drive. Thanks for the help all