Dual booting redhat and win2k
 

Alright. I know this question has been posted before. If not here..elsewhere. I've googled my heart out for this and now, i break down and ask.

I have a 4 GB drive and a 30 gb fdrive. win2k is on the 30, and i just installed redhat on the 4 gb one. (for the third time)

i've had this problem for quite some time.

first install: i wrote redhat over win2k, as win2k was originally on the 4 GB drive.

and i installed win2k after that on the 30 GB. but then i hear i'm not supposed to do that.

SO! i nuke the 4 GB drive by reformating and then reinstall redhat.

I have it set for the first boot sector, as i hear putting the boot loader in the MBR is bad.

fine. so i did that.

and now.. i get a "grub _" dude, and thats it. with my bios booting off that hard drive.

Now, i followed a guide to use the win2k boot loader to boot linux. where you dd a linux.bin file onto a floppy and then boot up win2k and copy it to the c drive and edit the boot.ini file. THAT doesn't work either. I get an error message abut windows.

and i also tried to use grub for duall booting (when i had edhat in that drives MBR, i belive.) and i could get redhat to boot, but not windows.

so!

what do i need to do to dual boot? i don't care what i have to reinstall, this is just driving me nuts. i've used the red hat cd to boot up and changed around the boot loader configuration, with no luck. And I don't care WHAT boot loader i use. just that I can dual boot.

my windows drive is ntfs...would that matter?

right now i have the 30gb drive with win2k as the CS master, and the 4 GB as the CS slave. because... i read that windows likes to be the master.

I've been through many google searchees and guides.. and nothing seems to work. And I don't care if i have to nuke EVERYTHING and start fresh. II bought the computer for $35 and i already lost anything thhat might have been valuble to me.

So yeah, if you coould help me out, that would rock. I'm hoping it's not an id10t error.

i think i can't help you much. but.
i've had a quite similar prob ("grub_" on the screen when booting) dd didn't work, too. i tried to use lilo but all i saw on the screen when i booted was a lot of "07".

i finally ended up booting linux with a disk where i installed the bootloader & booting xp (fat32) as if there was no other os...at least i can boot both os's now.

maybe this solution is acceptable for you, too. if not, good luck, you need it. i tried over two weeks to get it to work somehow, including everything i could find on the net (which wasn't much...)

I know this can be done as i'm on the machine that is doing it right now.

install again or use boot floppy to install boot loader if you can. when it is bootloader time use LILO. Don't activiate the bootloader partition. Don't replace code in the MBR. BUT DO INSTALL in the MBR. Use lba32 mode. (maybe not on your system i'm not sure.) If this doesn't work make sure you have a windows 98 start up disk (bootdisk.com) boot w/ it and use

fdisk /mbr

that will remove the LILO part in the MBR.
or make some windows 2000 boot disk.

I am having a similar problem. I have Red Hat 9 installed on a 10 GB drive split into the default partitions (root, boot, & swap). I got another computer (P3-850) with Windows 2000 on the C drive. I install the linux HD at the slave drive on the new PC. Since I want to use the PC for both W2K and RH9, I followed the online how-to and did the following:

--used a boot disk to load linux
--grub-install /dev/hdb2 (which is the boot partition) I did this because I had grub installed on the mbr of the 10 GB hd and not in /boot partition
--used dd to get the data from /dev/hdb2
--copied the dd data onto c:\linux.bin
--edit c:\boot.ini

When I select Linux from by Windows 2000 boot menu, I only get GRUB and it stalls out.

So far, I haven't found anything online that deals with this in depth. How can I point the boot load to the mbr of my linux hard drive instead of to /dev/hdb2? I know the MBR of that drive is fine since that is how I used to load Redhat before I switched PCs.

There is no such thing as an MBR on a slave harddrive when there is a primary one...you have to install the boot loader to the MBR of the first harddisk regardless of the OS. (if it doesn't work as i said before just us fdisk /mbr on a 98 boot floppy). the only way around installing to the MBR of your fully windows first hard drive is to see if your BIOS supports booting from a different disk or to use a boot floppy that lets u pick which partitions to run.

i did this. it didn't work. i don't think anyway that this problem ist a problem concerning the floppy-dd-w2k-bootloader thing. i used both possibilities & the output was exactly the same. the famous "GRUB"

I'm not having any trouble booting Win2K so the fdisk /mbr is not required. My problem is that I can only load Linux with a boot disk. I would like to be able to boot both OSes from the Win2K boot menu.

The linux drive used to be the only HD in a PC and Grub was installed on the MBR. I have moved that drive to the slave position of the Windows 2000 PC. I presume that the linux's MBR is still intact so why can't I point the boot loader to the slave's MBR?

Is there a way to take the data from the Linux boot floppy and save it to the Windows drive so the boot loader could use it?

okay I have two solutions first the right way

right way - boot to linux w/ ur boot floppy completely uninstall all linux boot loaders (except the floppy of course) and reboot if necessary (with the floppy) then reinstall the boot loader to the MBR...the MBR should now be on the first hard drive so it will install to the first rather than the second.

easy way - switch the hard drives around

i'd do it the other way round. linux is installed with it's bootloader which used to work, so why uninstall it? why don't dd the first 512 bytes & use the w2k bootloader to load linux instead?

go to http://acd.ucar.edu/~fredrick/linux/bootloader.html
the most important thing for you is the dd-command.

The linux boot loader probably still does work it just isn't on the MBR any more because he made it the slave drive to a windows master drive...so he just needs to install it all the same way but onto the new harddrives MBR not the one it is on right now...or switch the drives like i said...yes u could use windows 2000 Boot loader...but its not pretty :-P so i guess there are three solutions

1 reinstall boot loader to the new MBR

2 switch drives around

3 install linux in w2K bootloader

I really want to use the 3rd option. So far I haven't been successful but something hasn't been working correctly with capturing the boot info with the dd command (Grub just shows up on the screen when I select Linux from the Win2K boot menu). Maybe I'll try uninstalling Grub and then reinstalling it at /boot (/dev/hdb2) and try the dd routine again.

I'm also going to try a program called BootPart (http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homep...t/bootpart.htm)

I tried using the Grub shell and grub-install but none of it worked.

Next I tried bootpart and it worked perfectly. Now I can boot Win2K or Grub via the windows boot menu.

at least u got it figured out

Its amazing how some people stick it out to install linux and end up dumping it or going back to windows anyway. The install is not that hard if your reading the right post if your installing linux on a machine with windows simply install it and right the bootloader to the MBR. And If its a fresh install of both OS's """ALWAYS""" install Windows first....

boot floppies
 

Reading the notes above I recall my Mandrake (9.1 and 9.2) failing to create boot floppies. Each attempt yields the same results -- insufficient free space on that 1.44 floppy.

Why? Helpful hints will be appreciated.