Hi everyone,

I've just purchased a PC with an AMD 64 cpu and
2 HDD. My original intention is to install Windows
(2000 or XP) on one HDD and Linux RH 8 on the
other HDD.

Upon reading some articles in this forum, I have
realized the idea of creating a dual-boot system
(even with 2 HDD in a PC) seems like a very
complicated one. Can any of you help me on
how to accomplish this?

(i.e. how to install both Windows and Linux on
2 different HDD for a dual boot PC system)

My past experience... install windows OS on a PC
and use some UNIX commands at school...
(After reading some articles from this forum, I'm
still very confused about what LILO and GRUB are)

Thank you very much for your help, I look forward
to hear from you.

Yours sincerely,
linuxlinus (a linux newbie)

Hi.

The redhat installer will take care of this for you - the defaults work fine (redhat installs GRUB by default).

Basically, install Windows, on the 1st HD (windows doesn't like it when you install on the second), then install Redhat 8 on the second, and it will detect your windows installation and configure accordingly.

Once Redhat's installed you can figure out how it works.

Dave

Also - try a search on this site - the question has been asked hundreds of times over the last 6 months.

It's not difficult at all.
Install Windows first, on the first drive. When that's done, install Linux on the second drive, installing the bootloader in MBR (first harddrive)....it'll be sweet, really it will.
...except I don't know if win2000 will install on a 64bit machine....

Hi,
I'm new to linux myself, but I can tell you how I did a duel boot install on two hard drives.

I had winXP installed on the first hard drive (hda) and had been using the computer for sometime befor I bought a second hard drive (hdb) to install linux (Fedora) on.

I installled my new second HD and made it the slave and the winXP drive the master.


I read it's best to have win install first as it's happy when it's the first OS

Durring install of Linux it ask what drive to partition and I picked my new drive hdb (win was already on hda) and from there Linux/Fedora partitioned and installed everything.
I rebooted and had a screen were I could pick to boot into winXP or Linux.

So I have winXP on hda the master HD and Fedora on hdb the slave HD

LILO is a program (boot loader) that resides on your drive's master boot record. It boots a number of operating systems, including windows and Linux, and allows you to select to which to boot at startup time.

GRUB is a differant boot loader.

I'm not sure what the differance is in them.
When I installed Debian it installed LILO for me.
When I installed Fedora it installed GRUB.
They each give me a screen at the begaining were you pick to run winXP or Linux

I have found that what help most when learning Linux is to read, read and read some more.
It's unreal how much helpful information there is online about linux.
I have been spending hours and hours every night reading about linux.

You may now have more questions, as I may not have been much help.
This is just the way I went about doing a duel boot.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for giving me advice on how to
install a dual-boot (Win2000/RH8_linux)
PC system. I have installed them successfully
last evening.

Then I realize the following problems, and
wonder if you can give me some advice.

1) During post installation video/monitor
setup, I can't find my monitor and graphics
card models... so I picked the closest ones...
Now (after installation), can I modify my
vidoe setup (i.e. video ram size, graphics
card chipset)??? How can I do this?

2) My on board (motherboard) sound chipset
is not recognized by GNOME and KDE, how
can I fix this? I believe it's an AC97 CODEC...
Is there a way to find out exactly what it is,
and fix it? It complains about "/dev/dsp" not
found...

3) I have installed both GNOME and KDE, will
this cause me any problem? Should I keep
one and delay the other? If so, how can I
do this?

4) After o/s installation, I realize my linux o/s
can be boot up with decent speed; but when
I boot my PC with my Win2000, it's about 20x
(20 times) slower than before (i.e. when only
Win2000 was in my PC, not linux RH8); what's
the cause for this? Can any of you give me
some advice on how to fix this speed issue?
(It's like taking FOREVER to wait for Win2000
to boot and/or shut down my PC).

Finally, for those who are interested in installing
RH 8.0 or 9.0; but seeking for info... you can go
to the official red hat web site... they have very
good reference materials on how to install both
versions. I believe they also have RH9 for people
to download...

Thank you once again for your advice and help,
I look forward to more helpful advice from you.

Yours sincerely,
Linuxlinus

That's not a problem, you can switch between them. I did the same. Sorry I couldn't help with your other questions...

Hi again.

1) There's a file called XF86Config in /etc/

You'll have to be root to edit this, but this will let you define what drivers to use for your graphics card, and what resolutions are available etc. It's a bit daunting when you first look at it, but it's quite logical once you get your head round it. There's been plenty of posts on this forum dealing with how to set up this file. Alternatively (and definitely easier) is to use the 'Display' utility (in KDE it's in the K Menu -> System Settings -> Display. It's in the Gnome menu in a similar place too.)

2) The AC97 codec is supported, but you'll have to load the module for your motherboard to get it to work. You may also have to create /dev/dsp (a single command) and you might have to make some entries in /etc/modules.conf (just a couple of lines to add). Post back with your motherboard make and model, and we'll see what we can do.

3) It's probably best to have both desktops installed - a lot of programs rely on parts of KDE or Gnome, so you'd have problems later on installing software if you didn't have these.

4) I'm not too sure about this. I used to dual boot with RH9 and Win2000 and never noticed any slowdown. It could be that Windows is trying to access the Linux disk to see what's on it, but because it's (I imagine) formatted as ext3 or ext2, it can't. Other than that I can't see any reasons - Windows effectively doesn't know your Linux installation is there. Do you have any anti-virus software installed? The same thing could be causing it to keep trying to read your Linux disk when it can't understand the format.

Dave.

Hello everyone,

Thank you for your advice/help/input.

Q1) "video/display setup"

After logging in as root, I have
found the video setup now recognize
the correct memory size on my video
card, but still not the correct graphics
chipset (I chose the closest one during
my RH8 installation). Will this cause
any problem?

(i.e. I picked Nvidia Quadro instead of
Nvidia FX5700 chipset)

Q2) "AC97 CODEC (on board sound) not work"

I can't find /dev/dsp file, but I'll take
another look at it. Meanwhile I'll read
others' sound chip/card - linux setup
articles. I look forward to your advice.

Q3) Thanks for the info, I'll keep both GNOME
and KDE desktop environment.

Q4) "Win2k boot/shutdown too slow"
Prior to my RH8 Linux installation, I have
installed Win2k, a CPU monitoring software,
and Norton Internet Security software.
The last 2 software come with motherboard.

Now should I uninstall and re-install the
Norton Internet Security software?

My original intention was to have win2k and
RH8 linux on 2 physically separated HDD;
and to have my linux bootloader attached to
my hda vfat section (i.e. dual-boot setup).

Finally, thank you once again for your advice and
help. I look forward to hear from you again.

Yours sincerely,
Linuxlinus

Can you tell us what your video card is?, also knowing your sound card chipset would be really useful. If you don't know the answer download this on windows http://www.aida32.hu/download/aida32ee_390.zip

There you can see your device's names and post them here

If your card is Nvidia then you have to download and install the drivers from www.nvidia.com.

Just out of curiosity are you using RH8 because of any particular reason? if not I think you should try something lighter like mandrake 9.2, since this is your first linux install mandrake is a great choice, I'm not saying RH8 is bad (well I haven't really tried it though) but I've used RH9 and you have to do a bunch more of stuff than mandrake to get it working. Once you feel you have dominated and still wanna learn more then you can try RH or slackware or something like that.

Hello everyone,

The AC97 CODEC chip is soldered on my Gigabyte
GA-K8N motherboard. It's currently working in
win2k, but not in RH8 environment.

Is there a way (after logging in RH8 environment)
to find out what RH8 recognize (or not) this device
as? Or is there a way to fix this mute problem?
It's (in KDE environment) complaining missing
/dev/dsp.

The video card that I have is made by ASUS with
Nvidia FX5700 chipset. When I installed RH8, I
picked the closest chipset choice (i.e. Nvidia Quadro).
I guess it's closest because both are almost the
newest technology from Nvidia (i.e. 0.13um CMOS).
I also compared the memory bandwidth, both are
128-bit. Not sure if this is good enough for me to pick
"Quadro".

I haven't installed any additional IA64 drivers from
Nvidia web site, as I assume both my Nvidia nForce3 150
chipset (motherboard) and Nvidia FX5700 chipset (graphics)
should have the correct driver for my AMD64 and RH8
hardware/software environment.

(Sorry, my above assumption sounds very stupid...)

My last question regards to extremely slow boot up
and shutdown speed in my win2k environment. I've
installed win2k before RH8, hence I can see the HUGH
speed difference for my win2k bootup/shutdown time.
The partition that I made...

HDD#1 -> hda1 -> win2k
HDD#2 -> hdb1,2,3 -> RH8 Linux

(Right now, it's taking "almost forever" for win2k to
bootup and shutdown my pc)

Once again, thank you very much for your advice/help/input.
I look forward to hear from you.

Yours sincerely,
Linuxlinux