Mandrake 10/Windows XP Dual Boot Problem
 

I had Windows XP Professional installed on my comp and I wanted to install Mandrake 10 and set it up to do dual boot. I installed Mandrake on the same drive as I had XP, but when I restarted after the installation finished, the comp simply froze when it should've brought up the option of what OS to boot into. Any ideas what may have happened, because I'm going to have to reinstall both OS's now? Is there anything special I need to do in order to get this to work? And should I still install XP first and then install Mandrake from within XP, or try it the other way?

Also, I posted this a few days ago and got a couple of replies, but nothing that was a complete answer. However, based on what I was told, when I install XP and I get to the point where I reparition the HD, should I just leave some space unpartitioned so that when I install Mandrake, it can partition this unused space for it's own use?

Hi,

You can't install both to the same partition. Install XP, and either leave some space open for Mandrake or use a third-party partition tool such as PartitionMagic to create a parition for linux. Also suggested you create one more (~2gb) swap partiton for Mandrake. Then you can go ahead and install Mandrake, and choose "custom disk partitoning" when you have the option. Click your mandrake partiton, choose Mount Point and set that to '/'. If you have a swap parition click it and then toggle expert mode, choose Type: and from the list choose Linux Swap.

Good luck!

If I just leave space free, will I be able to create both a partition for Mandrake and a partition for the swap when I'm in the Mandrake installation?

Hi Mr.,
It's better to leave some portion of the disk unpartitioned. Tools like PartitionMagic and Qparted are medicines for an ill. The tools in linux are able to discover portions of disk available. The above tools will try to shrink the partition already existent to free unpartitioned space. They are useful when you buy a machine with pre-installed windows. You will not install both operating systems on the same partition.

yes, if your talking about reinstalling windows and leaving free space aka c: and an unformatted d: then mandrake will be able to install on what windows would consider d: . also i would suggest you let it auto partition if your not familiar with swap, / and /boot. then i would suggest grub over lilo but thats just based on my personal experience. at the end of the install you should get a summary page with various entries make sure you configure the bootloader properly with grub or lilo whichever you decide on. you should get a add or remove page with entries like vmlinuz, failsafe ,etc i believe it calls windows "dos" make sure it is added to bootloader screen if its not there.it is also here that you can change the default os and the timeout value before the default os loads it is set to 10 i change it 5 just cause im impatient. good luck.

post to recent post also amke sure that your motherboard supports LBA depending on the size of the drive because that may be a problem if your partitions r too large. your wont be able to boot past the 1024th cylinder. roughly about 8.5 gigs.

I only have one hard drive, so if I just leave some space free on c: when I make the NTFS partition for XP, will the Mandrake install be able to handle making the partitions it needs? Or would it be best to use one of the previously mentioned programs and create the extra partitions prior to actually beginning the Mandrake install?

your second option is the right one, create another partition with the software mentioned above. Then, during mandrake setup you could re-partition that spare partition in order to create swap and linux filesystem (/) at least, without damaging windows xp

regards

Yes this is correct, Mandrake has a completely able partition maker/changer/manager, its about the second step of the install i think. So yes if your gonna reinstall Windows again just leave some space. Say you have an 80 gig drive, allow 70gig for windows then 10 gig for linux(depending on how much storage space you are going to want to use for linux of course), when you start the Mandrake install you will be able to set that 10gig to say....9.5gig for linux main and .5gig for linux swap. You could tell it to auto partition during the Linux setup and it may do it for you but i prefer to do it manually as i dont always know what the auto partitioning will do. It's not to hard, just dont forget to set the mount point for your main Linux partition to / (if you dont understand you will see what i mean when it comes to doing the manual partition)