dual boot - one thousand questions
 

I need to make an XP/Mandrake dual boot on my laptop. I have XP already installed, and planned to use partition magic 8 to make it work. I have no floppy drive on the laptop, so any advise should not require the use of rescue discs and so on.
When prompted by PM8 where to create the new Linux partition I can choose between one of the following

'before C: - primary'
'after C: but before D: Dise_backup - primary or logical
'after D: Dise_backup' - primary or logical

I tried to put the new partition before C: on another computer but had XP left non bootable, so one question is if it would be better to make the partition after C: or D: Also should I leave both as primary?

I've read that it should be a problem if both of the 'boot-thingies' aren't within the first 8 GB of the HDD, so if I put Linux after 25 GBs of XP-partition wouldn't I have a problem with this limit?

which boot manager should I use - microsoft's or Linux's?
I had lots of problems on an ealier attempt because Linux left the XP MBR haywire, so advise on how to avoid these frustrations are much appreciated.

Any help and tips are very very welcome
cheers

This is from a post I put up a while back, but, I think it may apply, other thatn the fact that you are working with seperate partitions, not seperate drives......



This is what I have done, and it is what I recommend you do.

First.

You have two HDD's. I am assuming the following.

1st HDD is the XP Partition.

2nd HDD is going to be the Linux Partition (All data will be wiped!!)

Here is the process to install a dual-boot linux machine without surrendering your MBR to Linux.

Boot your ISO CD. After it has started, before you can run the install (depending on the distro) you have to run cfdisk to format the drives.
Because you are formatting a disk other than /dev/hda, you must specifiy which one to cfdisk.

cfdisk /dev/hdb

Now, create your swap, and system partitions here. Be sure to Write when you are done.

After this, run your install, and specify any options you may need (swap, etc. If you don't know what any of this is, ask!) as well as that your root partition is /dev/hdb*.

After the install, you will be prompted to choose a bootloader, and where to install it. Choose lilo, and choose to install it to the SuperBlock (this is the first sector of your root drive, in your case, /dev/hdb*). After the install is complete, do the following BEFORE YOU REBOOT. (Where * is the # of your boot partition)

1) insert a floppy (#1) in your floppy drive.

2) run the following command: fdformat /dev/fd0

3) dd if=/dev/hdb* bs=512 count=1 of=/dev/fd0

4) cd /

5) dd if=/dev/hdb* bs=512 count=1 of=bootsect.lin

Leave your floppy (#1) in your drive, and reboot. This should boot you into your new OS!!! Now, for the dual boot.

1) insert a DIFFERENT floppy (#2) into your floppy drive.

2) run the following command: fdformat -fat /dev/fd0

3) then: cp /bootsect.lin /dev/fd0

Remove this floppy (#2), and reboot into XP. Now, one final thing. When XP is loaded, and you are on the desktop, do the following:

1) insert floppy #2.

2) right click on my computer, and choose "Properties"

3) click "Advanced"

4) click the "Startup and Recovery" button.

5) Check "Display a list of Operating Systems" and set your timeout.

6) Click "Edit"

7) This is your boot.ini file. It will look something like this:



code:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


8) add the following lines to the END of your boot.ini file:


code:--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
C:\BOOTSECT.LIN="Linux"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


9) Copy bootsect.lin off of the floppy (#2) to C:\

10) Remove the floppy, and reboot.

You should be able to choose Linux, and it will boot your Linux partition!
Just be careful, as if you change your lilo.conf, you will have to recreate and recopy this file.

Hope this helps.


__________________
Registered Linux User #317345
No TCPA!
root@SCO# rm -fR /*

I affraid that your kind reply didn't help me much as I first of all only have one HDD and I don't know where to put the linux partition.
Second I don't have a floppy drive on my laptop, so I can't really use your pointers unfortunately.
but please keep the replies coming......

Mandrake has a partitioning tool that works really good, during the install it will ask how much space you want for your windows partition and linux and it will do it for you .

I have ealier tried to use mandrake's own partitioning tool and its true that it is fairly user friendly. The only problem was that I could not get it to be a proper dual boot. Only if I used a boot floppy for Linux was it possible (for me that is). I don't have a floppy drive so I don't feel like ending up in that situation again....
Any ideas of how to fix that?

Hmm.. I've installed Mandrake 8.2 and 9.2 and it uses lilo by default, and it configures it so I can choose which OS. I want when I start the computer. Which install do you use?

I used a mandrake 9.1, but one thing is that I used Grub, the second thing was that I had never tried messing with that kind of stuff..