WinXP and Linux on same HD?
 

Say I had WinXP on the first partition of my HD and want to install Linux on the next one. Can I proceed as you would if Win98 was on the first partition or is that likely to cause problems?

If it can be done is it possible to use the NTFS for XP or would you have to use FAT32?

Finally can LILO boot WinXP or would I have to use a third party boot manager?

Thanks, Alan

for putting windows and linux together, I'm pretty sure you need to have windows on the machine first. Then you install linux and viola! lilo just boots everything.
However....being that you're using windows XP (and I'm not familiar with the boot system for NT systems anymore) I'd suggest that you DON'T install lilo or grub or any of those bootloaders and just let the installer make a boot disk for your linux machine.

Hope this helps

1) Yes you can install Linux on the second Partition.

2) Well deoends on what kernel version you have. The newer ones support reading from NTFS drives, but writing isn't perfect yet. So if you just want to read the stuff from your winXP partition, you just need to get a newer kernel, and you are set.

3) Yeah LILO will boot winXP, do a search for LILO on this forum, and you will find tons of posts about it, and how to get it to work on NT systems like winXP or win2K. One thing though, some older versions of LILO need to be installed on the begenning of the HD, I think the first 1024 sectors, but if you are installing a newer version of a distro then you should have a newer version of lilo that should work.

I am doing exactly what you are talking about. I have WinXP installed on a large portion of my HDD and then Linux installed on a 4 GB partition. I Installed WinXP first and then Linux. After both were installed LILO gives choices for the two OS's. I have WinXP installed on an NTFS partition and Linux on a linux native partition.

Just install xp, (or leave it if it's already installed)
on your free partition install linux,(make sure you have a swap partition too)if your using mandrake 8.1 when you install lilo it should automatically detect your windows partition, and put an entry for it in /etc/lilo.conf
if not, then you'll need to do a little research, but it's really easy as pie
install lilo to the mbr

Thanks for the help guys.

I've got Mandrake 8.1 and as far as I know LILO can access partitions outside of the 1024 cylinder limit.

Bearing in mind that WinXP (with NTFS) will be on the primary partition and Linux on the extended partition is it okay to use HardDrake to divide up the second partition into root, swap, home, etc, or should I use Partition Magic (I have version 5) for this?

I had quick read through the PM manual and there was a warning about not using a Linux Partition Manager (Disk Druid was mentioned) to set up partitions if you were using another OS on the same HD. Otherwise, it was claimed, that you could render the partition table unreadable by the other OS!

Just one other question.... Is Boot Magic better/easier than LILO for dual/multi-booting?

Thanks again!
Alan

Using an extended partition to load Linux is the correct way to go when sharing a hard disk. While you do need to be careful, Linux is no more likely to mess up a partition table than is Partition Magic. PM has caused its share of grief, but usually because it's in the wrong hands.

The Linux partition(s) will be be non-existent as far as Windoze is concerned (in the absence of third party software), but Linux will know all about Windoze. Just don't try to write to an NTFS file space from Linux and you'll be alright.

sfin wrote:
>>2) Well deoends on what kernel version you have. The newer >>ones support reading from NTFS drives, but writing isn't >>perfect yet.

not quite true. people from ntfs project just put new driver for newer NTFS which needs to be patched in 2.4.18 kernel in order to work. Writing to NTFS is a long way to go

Thanks. I'll leave NTFS partitions alone when I'm in Linux!

I had the feeling there was a problem here because when I tried to set up and format a NTFS partition with HardDrake (just as an experiment) it refused to play ball. But HardDrake was quite happy to set up and format a FAT32 partition.

Alan.