dual booting xp & debian
 

Hello, my email - madallig@gmail.com


Please help - if my question has already been answered - then please direct me to that thread

I need a simple way to boot both debian and xp - debian either as an external usb HD or a partition in my existing internal HD on my notebook.

I don't want to upset the existing boot sequence in XP.

I have already successfully installed debian on an external usbHD - when my internal xp HD was taken out - and boot is fine as long as i don't put back the xp drive. When put back - then i get grub error ...

I have tried also to install debian with xp drive in place - install of debian seemed successful - but when finished - i could not boot either system - and eventually when i managed to get back my xp boot - my second partition on the xp drive went invisible - and i had to spend a lot of time to get that partition visible.

Easybcd seems a promising software - but it not for xp only vista?

Please is there a stable method and fail safe application so i can dual boot both xp and debian - debian looks very promising indeed and may completely change over in the future after further testing.

It seems although linux is getting better by the second - not enough attention is being paid to the dual boot issue - some simple is needed without upsetting the existing boot ....

Please advise: Adam Gill

email: madallig@gmail.com

Well, I'm not entirely sure of the setup which you are trying to use with GRUB, but I can tell you a few things:

First, linux formatted partitions are by default invisible to XP. So no surprise there that you couldn't find your debian part. Did you reformat the internal HDD to remove the debian partition?

If so, consider reinstalling to the internal HDD, they're much easier to deal with on boot :-).

Second, LILO is probably a better solution for you at this point in time bc it's a bit more simple to use than GRUB. If you reinstall debian to your internal HDD, you can use LILO to install itself to the Master Boot Record of your HDD and get your desired result.

http://linux.die.net/man/8/lilo
http://edge-op.org/grouch/relilo.html
http://www.faqs.org/docs/linux_scrat...er06/lilo.html

That should be plenty of info on LILO or GRUB, if you need anymore then google is always your best friend. Happy hunting :-)