Installing Win98 on slave drive to pre-existing linux install on primary
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Installing Win98 on slave drive to pre-existing linux install on primary
Hi,
Don't know if this should go under linux installation or even on a linux site. I'm using RH 7.1. I want to install win98 on a slave to the primary, where linux is living. I managed to DOS format the slave disk and start the win98 setup, but it complains that it can't find an MS-DOS boot partition on the 'first disk'. Is there anything I can do to fool it or give it what it wants on the primary? I can't wipe out anything on the primary and I've got some unpartitioned space at the end of it, but...
Does windows need to write to the boot partition, do you HAVE to install windows first?
yeah, windows won't work right unless it is on the primary hard drive and not a slave driven one... also, if you installed it, its usually best to install it first, as it wipes out the MBR ( master boot record ) in which your linux loader LILO is on.
Well I think you're probably right. I was thinking, though, what if:
I remove the linux drive, make the slave a master standalone, install windows there, then put the linux disk back as primary, and add an entry for the slave into lilo, i.e. other, win98, /dev/hdb.
Do you think windows would know that the MBR it's looking at is no longer on the primary device??
well, that is the problem though, windows doesn't like being a slave, even if you install it like that, it won't work right once you swap it around like you thought of. windows OS wants to be master when it comes to sharing... think of it that way.
I'm not sure if Win98 works the same way as Win2k in this respect, but I've got Win2k working on my slave drive. Here's my setup:
I had a 20GB drive as the primary master with Win2k installed on the only partition. (my secondary master is a CD burner and my secondary slave is a DVD-ROM drive). I bought a 40 GB hard drive and Mandrake 8. I put the 40 GB drive in as the primary master and made the 20 GB drive the primary slave. I installed Mandrake from the CDs onto the 40 GB drive. The Mandrake installer saw my Win2k drive as a windows partition, put it in /etc/fstab, and didn't touch it. It added the following to /etc/lilo.conf :
Now, lilo gives me the option to boot into Windows. When I do so, Win2k boots without complaining. It labels the primary slave as drive C and doesn't see the primary master. It also sees both CD drives (as D and E).
So what I would do if I had to start from scratch is make the Windoze disk the master, install Windoze, switch that drive to slave and set up the Linux drive as the master, install linux, add the above code to /etc/lilo.conf, run lilo, and try to reboot into Windoze.
We have to install Windoze first because we can't trust it not to screw up the MBR, but Linux can be trusted not to break an existing Windoze setup as long as you don't mess with existing partitions.
Thanks, it worked!
I unplugged the primary disk with linux on it, and made the new disk the only one, master on primary. Installed windows, then made the windows disk a slave to the linux disk, booted linux fine. Added the following to /etc/lilo.conf:
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