decent dual booting tutorial for a windowsXP/linux machine
 

hi. Im going to be setting up a dual boot machine with linux and windows XP and i have searched for a tutorial to help me. All the tutorials i find don't seem that good. Im wondering if anyone has used such a tutorial for dual booting that was very thorough and detailed. Im not asking for anyone to find one for me but if they hav used one before they really liked. thanks for any replies in advanced.

its so smple there's reaaly no point in a tutorial,many distro's will do it for you.

Install windows first, when XP asks where you want to install, delete all partitons, then create a new partiton, (how big depends on how big your disk is..

for example, if you have an 60 gig disk, you may want to install windows on a 30 gig partiton and leave the other 30 for linux.

format that partiton as NTFS, and install windows to it.

then install linux, select the unpartitoned space to install linux to, making sure the windows partiton is not set to format.

its that simple.

if you told us what linux distro you have decided on, the instructions could be more specific.

im going to install FC2. I have installed it before but never installed Windows XP before. I don't think it will be hard. Im not sure how the boot loader aspect will go. I read that some things are pissy if the windows loader isn't being used.

Google for the terms: NT Grub Duel Boot "How to" for a number of how-to's on the web on how to use the XP's loader (it uses the same program NTLDR.exe) as Windows NT does.

The process takes a bit of work but isn't to complicated. It involves writing either the lilo or grub boot loader to the Linux root partition instead of the mbr, using the 'dd' command to copy the bootstrap code to a file on floppy, copying the file to C:\, and adding an entry for it in the 'C:\BOOT.INI' file.

This method doesn't change the MBR at all, so you will be able to boot up Windows XP without any problems.

Here is on such link:
http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html

You should be able to ignore the part about the 1024 cylinder limit unless you have very old computer.

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P.S. In my own experience, I've never had a problem with installing the boot loader to the MBR on a laptop (On 5 laptop models, 3 of them with XP ), but I've had a problem once on a desktop.

the bootloaders are usually rather easy to configure. You could problem go ahead with the installations and get it running no problem. It should be pretty easy to "guess" your way through all of the choices offered to you by both installations.

However if you feel more comfortable by reading a how-to go ahead.

:Pengy:

Yesterday, after rebooting my desktop I got the 'L 99 99 99...' message.

I rebooted and went into the bios setup. I found that the bios set the usb key I had inserted since booting as the first boot drive. I selected the correct drive and it booted up fine. Just thought I would mention it because here was something I hadn't heard mentioned before.