I have been trying to configure a PC laying around to dual boot Windows and Mandrake 10. I have already installed Windows XP on one drive and then installed Mandrake 10 on the other drive. I have fooled around with adding a windows partition to the boot loader within Mandrake. But nothing has worked. I am just wondering what kind of approach to take and if there is are jumper settings I should try?

ps: both drives are western digital 6 gigs.

I'm not sure what you're asking. If you're using LILO or grub to boot, you should have your XP partition set up as a choice to load at boot.

Post your /etc/fstab and /etc/lilo.conf or grub equivalent so we can see how you've set things up

The best thing to do is to configure your LILO or GRUB bootloader from the Control Center in Mandrake. It should allow you to search for other systems on your computer.

Did Mandrake see your WinXP partition when you installed it, and did it mount the partition?

Another nifty tool is Webmin, and if it's not already installed with Mandrake 10, you can download it from here http://www.webmin.com

Installation instructions are also on the website. You may need to download the tar.gz version of webmin due to new kernel.

Once it's up and running, it'll open in your web browser and you can log onto it. The bootloader editing options for both LILO and GRUB are then located in the "hardware" settings of Webmin.

Any problems, just post again.

Good luck!

I have a similar question to ask about dual boot configs. I am very new to Linux, having just downloaded Mandrake 10 Official, and now I want to install it. But I already have WinXP Pro on this hard drive, and I want to keep it... is it possible to have both Operating Systems on the same hard drive, with the option to choose which one to run at computer startup, and how do I go about making this happen? Any input would be helpful... thank you.

Do a search for 'dual boot' - this comes up a lot

And welcome to LQ

Thanks Xavier, for both the info and intro... I'm sure I'll be seen a lot around here while I break myself into Mandrake. Now I just need to figure out hardware compatibility... I'm most worried about my radeon 9600SE and my network card.

there was a time when the ntfs partition and dual booting was a problem, I believe that has been fixed (a search would probably return many hits. If XP is setup on a fat32 partition, you can install mandrake and choose to install lilo to the MBR and lilo will set itself up for dual boot.

I managed to get Mandrake 10 installed with no problem at all. The install program took care of partitioning and all that stuff just fine. Now I am just having a lot of issues getting my video card to run properly.

Here is my /etc/fstab file.


/dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hda6 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom auto user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,umask=0,exec 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850,umask=0 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda5 swap swap defaults 0 0
none /mnt/hd supermount dev=/dev/hdb1,fs=ext2:vfat,--,iocharset=iso8859-1,kudzu,codepage=850 0 0


Here is my /etc/lilo.conf file:

# File generated by DrakX/drakboot
# WARNING: do not forget to run lilo after modifying this file

boot=/dev/hda
default="linux"
prompt
nowarn
timeout=100
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5 splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht resume=/dev/hda5 devfs=nomount"
read-only
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe
other=/dev/hdb1
label="windows"

I still can't boot

After editing the lilo.conf file, run the program /sbin/lilo to actually set those changes. You can edit the lilo.conf file all you want, but it doesn't get hard coded to the boot loader until you run that program. That was my big problem.

blackhawks22 - Did you swap your disks around after installing XP? According to your fstab and lilo.conf, Windows is on hdb, the secondary drive. Windows needs to be on the primary drive to work

You should make the Windows drive the master, which will probably make Mandrake unbootable. If you only recently installed Mdk, the easiest thing would be to reinstall it on hdb and install lilo to the mbr. Lilo will recognize the XP partition and include the option to boot it.

There is another way to get Mdk up again, but it involves editing fstab and lilo.conf from the rescue disk, so reinstalling at this early stage is the easier option.

Thanks mdg your right I forgot to switch the jumpers around. I just reinstalled Mandrake like you said and now it works thanks for all your help everyone THIS SITE IS AWESOME!!

Sorry for reviving this post but I'm in a desperation for help. I'm too running a system with Mandrake 10 and windows XP. This is how is layout:
Hard Drive 1 (Windows XP and Mandrake 10) have this two OS systems.
Hard Drive 2 (Intended for data storage, running on windows)
DVD Rom
CD Rom
Floppy Disk

I install the Lilo bootloader inside the MBR in the Windows XP partiton, following the suggestions of the mandrake linux starter guide. Now, the only system that is able to boot is the Linux system. I want to know if is any change that I can do to the Lilo.conf file that will allow me to boot both system. Can any one point me to the proper line to be modify .

This is how the fstab file looks like:

/etc/fstab file

/dev/hda5 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0
/dev/hda7 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
/dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom auto umask=0022,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
/dev/hdd /mnt/cdrom2 auto umask=0022,user,iocharset=iso8859-1,codepage=850,noauto,ro,exec 0 0
none /mnt/floppy supermount dev=/dev/fd0,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0022,iocharset=iso8859-1,sync,codepage=850 0 0
/dev/hda1 /mnt/win_c ntfs umask=0022,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
/dev/hdb1 /mnt/win_c2 ntfs umask=0022,nls=iso8859-1,ro 0 0
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 swap swap defaults 0 0
none /mnt/hd supermount dev=/dev/ide/host0/bus0/target1/lun0/part1,fs=ext2:vfat,--,umask=0022,iocharset=iso8859-1,kudzu,codepage=850 0 0

And this is how the Lilo.conf file looks like:

/etc/lilo.conf file

boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
default="linux-i686-up-4GB"
keytable=/boot/us.klt
nowarn
message=/boot/message
menu-scheme=wb:bw:wb:bw
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht splash=silent"
vga=788
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz-i686-up-4GB
label="linux-i686-up-4GB"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd-i686-up-4GB.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht splash=silent"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.3-7mdk
label="263-7"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.6.3-7mdk.img
append="devfs=mount acpi=ht splash=silent"
read-only
image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="failsafe"
root=/dev/hda5
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="failsafe acpi=ht devfs=nomount"
read-only
other=/dev/hda1
label="windows"
table=/dev/hda
other=/dev/hdb1
label="windows2"
table=/dev/hdb
map-drive=0x80
to=0x81
map-drive=0x81
to=0x80
other=/dev/fd0
label="floppy"
unsafe

I am trying to install Mandrake 10 that i downloaded off their site. I made the CD and all is well with the bootup part. I have WinXP Pro on this drive and do not have it partitioned. I am trying to install Mandrake 10 and it gets to a point where it says, That CD Rom disc does not seem to be a Mandrake Linux Installation CDRom. Retry with another disk?

I have made a boot disk via rawritewin.exe and booting off the floppy, however it will not work. Any suggestions?

jmr0311 and temdesign - you have a much better chance of having your issues fixed if you each post in a new thread instead of attaching to a resolved thread.