Sorry if the topic title seems kind of wordy, but I really couldn't think of what to say.

Until recently I have been running two computers, one with Debian Linux and the other Windows XP. Sadly, about a week ago the motherboard or CPU crapped out on the linux computer(yes, I have checked to see if the two sticks of RAM I had in there were bad, but they weren't). Thus, I want to transfer the hard drive with Linux over to the Windows computer and configure both for a dual boot. Linux is using GRUB, and I'd prefer it to be a slave drive and Windows the primary. If it's quite a hassle to do this, I'd rather reinstall Debian, for I have the /home directory separate from / and thus wouldn't lose anything. What should I do to accomplish this?

Basically the following:

1) boot into your linux setup using a rescue disk

many install disks are also rescue disks and some even provide a specific feature /instructions to get back into your system again. Basically it comes down to mounting your / dir somewhere under mount and then pointing chroot to that location to use this as the new assumed root. If you have a seperate /bot partition, this is the time to unmount it and mount it again to make sure the right partition it being used.


2) edit grub.conf

change "root (hd0,0)" for "root (hd1,0)" since linux is now on the second harddisk and adapt any other indications of the location of your installation accordingly.


3) add a line for windows

title windows
root (0,0)
chainloader +1


4) install grub to the MBR

"grub-install /dev/hda" will do.


5) reboot to check everything works fine.

make sure to write down how to reinstall the windows bootloader in case something fails and you need to get it back. If I remember correctly fro xp you boot fromm the cd and from rescue mode tell it to 'fixmbr', but you'd better check up on that.