Hi, and I'm glad to be able to ask questions to such awesome people such as frequent this site!

My old laptop (with Win98, Win2K, Mandrake 9.2, and Libranet 2.8) broke down, so I got a new one. I will reinstall the Linuxes from scratch, as I didn't have many extra programs installed and at anyrate now Mandrake 10.0 is out that I want to try. However, the Windows will be more of a problem. I have a lot of programs installed on the Win2K partition especially (and Win98 is good to have around to run older programs), and I wouldn't want to spend the hours it would take to reinstall everything. So my questions boil down to:

(a) With Partition Magic and Drive Image (2002, btw), can I merely copy the Windows partions over, install the new drivers (from the rescue disk that came with the laptop), and go off on my merry way? Or is it more complicated than that? And can XP, 2K, and 98 all peacefully coexist like 2K and 98 did?

(b) Does Windows 98 demand to be on the first partition? If so, what the heck do I do about Windows XP (which I want to keep, just in case)?

(c) Once the dust is settled and all the partitions are on the new hard disk, what do I do about booting? Should I just add all the partitions somehow to the NT Boot Loader, or would juggling them all with GRUB be any easier? (If so, I'll probably make a small, text-only Gentoo or Slackware partition to be a permanant home for GRUB while I play with the other distros.)

Thanks, and sorry if I'm asking too many questions; I'm just at a loss about what to do now!

--RainierPeak

Win98 always wants to be on the first partition of the first hard disk, but you can trick it with grub, so you can put it on another partition.

I currently do this with Win2K, as I wanted to keep my installation as well, but move it around. grub is capable of booting them through its chainloader. the command to play tricks with win98 is map i.e.

[code]
title Windows 98
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
makeactive
map (hd0,0) (hd0,5)
map (hd0,5) (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
[\code]

This swaps the two partitions, so Win98 thinks its on the first partition when actually its on the sixth. Read up on the grub manual for more details.

Note: The Windows versions Always have to remain ( or be tricked into thinking they are ) where you installed them. So if you move Win2K from D to E, it will not work.

Playing like this is dangerous and things can foul up quite easily, The chainloader, can start the NT loader, but if theres no NT loader installed at the beginning of a partition, it can get very dodgy.