A friend asked me to set up linux on his pc, he doesn't have a copy of windows yet, but he is going to install in the next weeks or so.

Does windows-xp need to be on hda1, or just hda?

and...

I know it's going to fry the mbr, so is there a quick way to rewrite it? Something like the way most installers do it? I'd hate to come around again just to re-write the grub entries.

OSes all need to go on a partition--eg hda1. hda just means the whole drive.
When installing windows, you will not see the hdXY partition naming.....

When installing window after Linux, you do need to reinstall the bootloader---unless:

The easy workaround is to simply put the Linux bootloader on a floppy. Then install windows and it will take over the mbr and boot on its own if the floppy is not installed. To get a menu, edit the grub or lilo config file in the linux /boot directory.

You can always set up the Linux bootloader on the mbr later.

It's my understanding that XP isn't so fussy as earlier versions of windows were. Though, maybe, just maybe, it'd be worth setting up the partition structure so that windows has somewhere to go when your friend get's his windows copy ???

i.e. You are probably aware that you can only have the max of 4 primary partitions, and that you don't necessarily need a /boot partition (though I believe it's still the gentoo default i.e. /boot, /swap and /) so maybe hda1 for the windows (not sure if that can be preformatted as ntfs or not) then depending on the size of the HDD and what your friend intends doing with the PC, maybe make hda2 a windows FAT32 partition (erm, but do that with windows otherwise I think you'll find that linux will mark it as a linux FAT32 partition and XP won't want to see it), then maybe make hda3 and 4 extended, so you install any linux into that - it would give you the maximum possible number of permutations i.e. maybe your friend will think linux is the "mutz nutz" and want to try other versions at the same time, or multiboot a number of linuxes (or is that linii ? ) or whatever, so you just need to get all the stuff about the partition sizes worked out etc etc.

Basically, 'sup to you.

regards

John

I know, but I know that windows needs to be somewhere on the first primary harddisk (hda, sda). I wasn't shure if it needs to be on the first primary partition too. I'll just reserve the place for it, can't be such a bad idea.
Ah, floppys! Good old times. I did this with suse 7.0 Nah, I think I'd rather re-install grub. (you forget the boot disk is in there, then you shut down again, reboot...)


I probably wouldn't have thought of that. I wasn't going to get fancy with partitioning, but putting / and Swap into an extended partition, is probably a good idea.

Thanks all, I'll go now.
wish me luck

You might want to wait due to windows always over-writing the mbr. I first added windows xp to my laptop then I put slackware after and lilo boots both of them just fine. Also I could be wrong but I don't think you put swap on a logical partition.

copy your important data to another partition install winxp on the first primary partition then install linux on another partition. save yourself some headaches.

No need to fret.
Windows (using a standard install) requires a primary partition on the boot disk (i.e. the disk the BIOS boots from).
Afterwards, cleaning up the MBR is simple - boot a liveCD, chroot into your Linux install, and simply run the (grub) setup command.

Pre-allocating a (primary) partition is a good idea - I do it even if I'm not planning a Windows install. That and /boot as primaries, everything else as logical - never had a problem.

Edit: Ooops - thought I was on another forum; response updated to be more general.

never thought of that.
I learned something good