I am trying to dual boot windows xp and slackware. I have WXP as my master and want linux on my slave.

I have partition magic and boot magic. I installed boot magic on a second partition (FAT32) on my first drive. This then caused a problem because when I used PM to set up my second disk ready to take Linux my machine had to reboot. As it booted BM came up and offered to boot WXP or Windows 9x or DOS this obviously being my FAT32 partion. (not bootable ofcourse) So I booted into windows and found that BM had hidden the partition it was on meaning I could not edit it with the config tool to boot my Linux partition. (bare in mind linux is not on the partition yet but as soon as I saw this I knew there was no point in continuing as.)

I DO NOT HAVE A FLOPPY DRIVE so I could not boot the BM config outside Windows.

So what I want to know is before I brake my PC again, ( I tried converting XP to FAT32 with the intent of mergeing the partitions. SCREWED THINGS UP.), if I delete the so called 9x/DOS partition from BM will it not hide it after I restart windows? This is because after the install I can actually get into the config because it has not yet restarted and used BM to boot for the first time. I tried using PM to unhide the partition but that require a restart which in turn uses BM and hide the partition again! (bugger)

I have completely formated my PC and would like answers before I start messing things up again (LOL).

Any help is greatly appreciated. I am an IT apprentice supporting a Windows Network and I would really like to try linux out. (Get the taste of a new flavour!!)

Hello there,
why are you screwing up things using partition magic and boot magic ??? They may be good tools but are not successful everytime.
since u want to dual boot your system....so follow the following steps:

1. install the windows and partition your drives which suits you best. Depending on the RAM size leave enough space for swap.
so have FAT32 partitions, one partition for swap and one for linux.
2. now install linux on the partion specified for it.
3. install the bootloader of linux into MBR.
4. mount the windows drives into linux.

thats it !!!

any further query is welcome.

regards

partition magic and boot magic are Windows apps--I dont know how they will help with Linux.

If Windows is already installed:
Use partition magic if necessary to create free space on the disk.
Boot from the Linux CD and let the installer create the Linux partitions.
The Linux installer will prompt for where to put the boot loader---since you dont have a floppy, then it will go in the mbr on drive 1.

If Windows not installed (or not working):
Install normally, but be sure to leave free space on the disk
then install Linux as above

Hello,

I tried the putting LILO in the mbr once before but as soon as I booted I got something like this.

07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07 07

I might have another go as i can easily fix the mbr with the recovery console if it goes wrong, because i think i screwed some things in my linux/lilo setup last time.

Should I use PM to set my second drive up to ext2 first? Doesn't PM have a PQ boot option to reboot to another OS nce in windows, wouldn't tht cause it to constantly go to linux though?

Ah, another PartitionMagic victim.

You could have fixed the problem in under 5 minutes by booting into any Live-CD or rescue linux version and then using fdisk to change the NTFS/FAT32 partition type to a non-hidden type and to set the NTFS/FAT32 partition as bootable.

Also, the PM CD is self booting and could have been used to set the NTFS/FAT32 partition as active/bootable.

**********

For anyone who is reading this thread because you can’t boot windows after using PM to create linux partitions, here’s what’s wrong: PM will set the bootable NTFS/FAT32 partition as “hidden” when you create a linux partition. Windows absolutely demands that its partition be marked as bootable and that the partition is “unhidden”. In PM-speak, this is the “active” partition setting.

If you are facing this problem, do not reinstall windows. Do not reinstall linux. Do not try to use the xp recovery console to fix the problem. Follow the steps outlined above.

This is an extremely easy problem to fix.

lets just say i don't have the PM disk. Or at least I have a disk with a setup file on.