Hi everyone,

after much debate, I went back to using Mandrake 10.0 on the HP. I realize why I switched to 10 after seeing how 9 was making my cdrom picky about reading cds (it won't read cds with the slightest of scratches under 9! all but an exception for the Mandrake iso cds that was).

I have never had a dual boot machine and I was wondering how do I go about installing XP/10 on a machine? My boyfriend has to reinstall XP and I'm considering asking him if we could have a dual boot on his Dell 2350. The specs aren't going to be much of a problem really but they are:

Memory - 700 or so odd MB of ram, will be 1 gig later
HD - 38.2 GB WITH 23.2 GB currently free

Which one should we install first if we do make a dual boot machine, XP or Mandrake? I also know to do a scandisk/defrag first on Windows before making a dual boot. I've asked people before and tried but they made it sound so complicated. That was with Mandrake 9 and when Mandrake started it was text only and said Mandrake 9.0 (dolphin) at the top and offered a login. When I did that install it never asked me if I wanted to have a text or graphical login/Linux setup.

We do have 2 hds in the comp but the other one is a backup hd so I couldn't do a master-slave dual boot thing. We also have no cdrws to burn stuff to so yeah we're in a pickle pretty much

Thanks everyone

ps- will i need partition magic to make things easier to partition? i hear of people having/using pm 8 to partition their hds for dual boot.

Hi, I've done this a few times now, learning linux by trial and error for the last 12 months or so.

installing different varieties, Probably around 2 or 3 times a month on 2 machines. (I like to be able to explain things to myself, Heh, heh.)

Windows, no matter what flavour will want the first active partition.

Now to clarify this, I've had winxpsp2 set up on the first partition and linux/mdk 10.0 on an other, but when I tried to load them the other way around I found that windows messed up the boot loader to the point that I couldnt access my linux partitions other that to reinstall mdk. Then windows wouldnt boot.

So, in short, setup windows first, you'll probably need 10 gig of hd space for it and if you can stick another hd in there, do it. Swap files work wonders when they are on a separate hd to the os.

That goes for Mandrake too.

Once you have windows all set up and working the way you want it, then do the mdk install, you've done this b4 so just do it the same except to a different partition.

You'll get all the questions about partitioning during the installation.

When it asks you where you want to put the boot-loader, choose MBR on the first partition, It won't destroy the windows boot, it'll just show the lilo (I havent used grub, so no comment from me about that) boot loader first, you can then select linux or windows from there.

At the moment I have win98se for games on the first partition of hd 1, and winxpsp2 on the second partition of hd 1, then linux root on the 3rd partition of hd 1.

The second hd has win98 swap on the first partition, winxp data with the swap file on the 2nd partition of hd2 and the linus swap partition is the third partition.

The rest of the hd's are split up to give me a linux /storage partition, (used for backup data and downloaded rpms in the event of having to reinstall)and other partitions for winxp.

I tend to do separte partitions for the linux system, like /, /home, /tmp, swap, /usr, /var and /storage.

The reason I use a storage partition and not just back up to the standard folder is if I need to reinstall, and I'm not too sure of the problem in the first place, I can save all the conf files here and compare them later, and it saves typing them all over again. (Bit extreame? Oh well, that's just me)

So go for it and have fun.

You will only need an external partitioning program if you want to RESIZE the windows partition.

Other wise MDK has all you need.

Your backup hd files could be copied to the windows partition b4 repartitioning it, then copied back.
(for setting up a faster swap file system, windows will benifit too)


The /storage folder thing...... When reinstalling I can format all the other linux partitions so I know I'm starting clean.

IT education is expensive

(EDIT)... you said, HD - 38.2 GB WITH 23.2 GB currently free.

Ahh, did you mean only the one large partition?

If so, you could still get this to go, by putting the windows drive in to the linux box and doing the partitioning from there.

Download Qtparted from

http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat....i586.rpm.html

or get it off a Knoppix live cdrom, It's not a real big .rpm.

Warning, NTFS can have problems when resizing. so back up. I think you already know that.

But on the reverse side of that, I've done it and so have a few other ppl I have spoken to, and it does work. But you've been warned.

Qtparted is like PM, a GUI so you can visualise the layout, and you can undo things till you're happy, and commit when your ready to go.

It does work, and at worst you may need to repair the winxp boot, from your winxp cd.

Just make sure windows still works properly b4 you install Mandrake and you'll have the best and the rest.