A similar topic heading has been used here once, but it was a different sceniro, entailing 3 OS's on 1 HD. Here's my deal / question:

I currently have 2 HDs in one machine, one with XP home (40GB) and the other XP Pro (120GB). The one with XP Home contains what I guess you would call the "boot loader." When I start the PC I get a menu with the two OSs to choose from.

However, I want to now install RH9, but on the HD that does NOT contain this "boot loader" because it is larger. I used PartitionMagic 8 to make a new 5GB partition for RH, but I need to know if I will screww up my PC doing this.

If I boot from the RH CD, will it allow me to choose which HD and which partition I wish to use? And if so, when I boot my PC will RH's boot loader become the default, and also display a menu with the 3 OSs to choose from?


If I was not clear enough in my discription, and you'd like more info, please ask. I have used RH 8 and Mandrake 9 on a box by themselves, and even one dual boot system, but this is the first with three. Also, I am a big time rookie with Linux.

Thanks for any help!

first and foremost: you're lucky you haven't screwed up your system already. Dual-booting XP home&pro is dangerous because you make yourself wide-open to crosslinked files.
as for the tri-boot system, just load LILO in the redhat install... it will definitely load the OS you're installing, and will recognize your XP home & pro systems... you may have to edit lilo.conf to get it to distinguish, as it may just read
but it should work fine and will distuingish the two after you tell it to
good luck!

Naw, never have had a problem dual-booting to XP OSs. Always have installed on separate HDs though, maybe that's the key.

Thanks for you help with the RH install. I appreciate it. Now a followup if you don't mind. 1) Will the RH install give me a choice of loaders to use, allowing me to choose lilo. If memory serves, there is actually a choice of two. 2) How would I go about editing the lilo.conf file and when? Do you get the option during install? In other words, will I be prompted to choose the boot order?

By default, it *usually* installs the graphical version, GRUB. and yes, it will give you the option to install, or at least should.
if you've installed X, go to your /etc directory, as root of course, and edit the lilo.conf file. there will be a line like this after each little segment
where *=hd number ie: hd1,hd2,hd2a
hd1 will be XP Home
hd2a=XP Pro
hd2b=Redhat
hd2c=swap
you'll just have to configure the label="windows" to say
label="WinXP Pro"

Yes, Grub. That is the one I have used a couple times before. Thanks for the tips man. I guess I'll go ahead and get started on that install. I'll let you know how it went.

I went through the trouble of downloading all 4 installation ISOs for Fedora Core 2, but when I went to the mall to buy a book on it, it was $30 and came with the Core 1 CDs. So I figured I'd head to Ollies and try to find the same book for less. They didn't have Fedora, but they did have RH9 with the installation disks

Since it was only $6 and had the latest RH distro, and the fact RH and Fedora or twins seperated at birth, I got it (yes Linux gurus, I know there are differences. But 80% is the same).

Anyway, our primary machine has 2 HDs, one with XP Home and the other XP Pro. The Pro HD is a 120GB drive so I used PartitionMagic 8 to create a 5GB partition for Linux on it. The installation at first wasn't the smoothest, as it would not allow me to use the "Autiomatically" partition feature. But aside from the fact I had to set up the Linux root, boot and swap partitions manually, all else went pretty well. Well, actually, when the graphics card section displayed for me to choose my card (a Radeon 9200), mine wasn't listed. There was a 9100 and then it jumped to 9700, but no 9200. So I chose the 9100 card thinking "it was close enough." WRONG. X failed to load and I had to use a generic driver.

Anyway, I am now on here using RH9 and the Galeon browser. hurray!

Thanks for your help man!