Hi there, I'm a total newbie to Linux. I really want to try it though, so I'm trying to setup a dual boot on an old computer with Windows 98. I've downloaded the Mandrake installation and burned them to 3 CDs. I know setting up a dual boot involves partitioning the hard drive. Does the Mandrake installer handle this? If someone could point me to a guide for doing this, I'd be eternally grateful.

Welcome to LQ!

You should try searching Google and/or LQ because there is a lot of information out there on dual booting.

That said, I've dual booted with Win98 before and I've had no special problems.

You'll want to install Windows first, because it writes information to the MBR and Mandrake might overwrite that. Install Windows98 and use the tool on the CD called 'fdisk' to set up a FAT32 Partition. It should be at least 300MB and should leave a few gigabytes if you plan on installing everything in Mandrake.

Once Windows 98 is installed on it's partition, pop in your Mandrake CDs and yes, the Mandy installer should recognize your Win partition and set it up with the bootloader.

It's really easy once you try it! Just make backups

Hmm. Well, Windows 98 is already installed. Do I have to reinstall it in order to set up a dual boot?

There is a tool for Windows called 'Partition Magic' which can resize a partition. If you can use that, then no, you can simply shrink your Win98 partition and install Mandrake on the other one.

I have never used Partition Magic, and it does cost money, but there is a 'free trial' which you could use for this one case (example: http://www.softpedia.com/public/cat/13/8/13-8-2.shtml).

PM I believe is able to create a new partition for Mandrake for you, but if you leave the extra space unpartitioned Mandrake will do the work for you.

Search LQ for more information on PM if you need to, there is lots of information on it.

Hi CoolMoose, welcome to LQ.

Firstly how large is your harddrive?

Secondly, this is not a hard thing to do (daunting for a newbie because you don`t know what to do) but we`ll try and fix that

What you need to do first is make a backup of any important info that you have in windows just in case in the unlikely event that something goes wrong you don`t lose anything vital.

Next you will need to defrag windows so that all your data is nice and orderly and neatly packed on one end of the drive.




You won`t have to partition your drive beforehand as the Mandrake install will do it for you. When you get to the appropriate section of the install it will give you two options

1) Delete windows and use the whole drive for Mandrake (which you don`t want to do) This will be called "erase entire disk"

2) Resize the windows partition to make enough room for Mandrake to install itself. (the amount will depend on how large your drive is and how much room you want to allocate for your mandrake install.) This will be called "Use the free space on your windows partition" This is the one to use if you want to dual boot windows and linux.

There is another option it may give you called "Custom Partitioning" , but i suggest you leave this alone unless you know what you are doing and more importantly exactly what you want as far as individual partition sizes are concerned.

You will get to a section at some point where it will ask you where to put the bootloader, just select MBR and mandrake will have detected your windows install and added it to the bootloader so that when you reboot it will give you the choice of what (windows or linux) you want to boot up

So yes, the Mandrake installer will do the partitioning for you, and no you don`t have to reinstall windows .

I`ll just have a look on the Mandrake site to see if i can find some more info on this for you and post back with the link ( i`m sure they will have something on this there)

If your still worried about anything just ask, the people here are always friendly and willing to help

cheers

OK you may find this useful http://www.mandrake.tips.4.free.fr/install100.html

goodluck!

By the way, the install is easy, it will walk you through everything and probably only take about 45 mins. But just take your time and read everything and you should be fine!

I read through that whole guide, and went to set it up. I inserted the first CD, rebooted, and... nothing happened. It found no boot record on the CD and just started Windows normally. I thought I might just have a faulty download, so I redownloaded, this time through bittorrent. No dice. I wondered if it was just the computer, so I tried it on my primary computer, which is newer and has Windows XP. Nothing happened. Then I tried accessing the boot menu as it restarted and selected to boot from CD. Still nothing. I can't figure out the problem. All you have to do is just burn the .iso file to a blank cd, then insert that and reboot right? Am I missing something crucial?

edit: oh and I did run scandisk and defrag before I tried.

The problem it seems you're encountering is that it is indeed not booting from the CD as you thought.

Go into your bios settings when your computer first starts up (and does the memory test),

For me I have to hit DEL to "enter setup" you might have to use DEL, or F1 etc. depending on the motherboard. once in your bios settings goto the option usually located under "Standard CMOS settings", it's called "Advanced Perhipheral settings" or something usually. In here you should find your boot sequence, which will tell the computer what device to boot from first. A normal setup would be like this

First Boot Device: Floppy
Second Boot Device: HD-01 (Harddrive-1)
Third Boot Device: CDROM

in this instance change it to the following

First Boot Device: CDROM
Second Boot Device: Hd-01
Third Boot Device: Floppy

This will tell your computer to boot from CDROM before the HD (which is why Win98 is loading). Insert Mandrake 10 CD1, Save settings and exit.

When your computer continues to boot it should use the CDROM first, after installation is complete be sure to change your boot settings to how they were.

Good luck

Colin

Uh-oh, lol, I just read the problem...

Here's what you did:

1. Open CDBURNer Software
2. Drag .ISO file into the blank cd burning space
3. hit burn....

What an ISO is is it's a copy of a WHOLE cd, a normal cd with files/folders etc. You need to BURN the IMAGE to a blank CD (from the ISO). To accomplish this with Nero, goto "File" then goto "Burn Image", then find the ISO image and burn as normal.

Am I wrong?

Colin

Also for the partitioning problem are you using 1 or 2 hds? Is the space you're using for Linux formatted or unformatted? ie.

a 100GB drive

WINDOWS (50GB) || Unformatted unpartitioned space
or
WINDOWS (50GB) || Formatted space

if there is unformatted unpartitioned space on the drive, if there is Linux will install it perfectly when it gets to the "Partitioning" step during installation, no need to format etc. If you're using a second HD it's even EASIER! When installation gets to the "Partitioning" step during installation choose "Use Entire Disk". and then select which HD it is (hda being the first drive, hdb being the second).


Now if someone would only reply to my post....
Good luck

Colin

I can't thank you enough. Sure enough, I just needed to brun the iso image. Mandrake is now successfully installed alongside Windows 98, and I couldn't be happier. Something confuses me though: installation was completed successfully with just disc 1. I put in disc 2 and got the installation screen, then it went to another menu, and then it told me it wasn't a Mandrake installation CD. If disc 1 installed Mandrake, what are discs 2 and 3 for?

Hrm it didn't need the 2nd and 3rd disks because of the options you chose to install, for instance, had you chosen options to install like server apps, SMTP services, FTP etc, it might have needed the additional CDs.

Colin

Hi Moose,

What you've done is installed pretty much the basic system.

When you installed you would have checked only the minimum sets of programmes. However all that excellent software is still available to you. If you go into "Mandrake Control center": launch>system>configuration>configure your computer - put in your root password. Then click 'install packages', MDC will bring up a window with all the packages available to you on the disks under four headings.

The one you will probably be most interested in is the "Workstation" heading click on the arrow to the left and a number of headings will appear such as "Multimedia station", "Game station" "Office station". Click on the arrows to the left and the list will show what you have available on your disks to install. Highlight a package and details of what the highlighted programme is about will appear in the right window. (edited cos I dunno my left from my right )

Some of the essentials I personally install are Open Office, Mozilla, the GIMP and the gnome games package.... what can I say I'm addicted to Tetris!

Once you start adding these sorts of packages you will definitely need those other disks.

Yo
__________________________________________

No you do not. You have a few obstacles to overcome though.

Is windows installed on a single partition that takes up the whole drive or is there either
free drive space to partition [not free drve C space, but free space that is not a drive letter under win98]?

In most cases, people are going to parttion the whole drive for drive C and install win98. If this is your case, then it gets a bit tricky
bet we can still proceed without killing windows just yet.

Turn off your swap file and do a FULL defrag a few times,, then turn your swap file back on.
This will likely require several reboots. I always hated that about 98.

The purpose of this was to get all your files to the FRONT of the drive partition, becasue we are going to steal some space from the partion, and we don't want it to be inhabited space.

Now get the free space of that defragged drive. Estimate about what portion can be removed without puting you in too much of a crunch and write it dopwn, be it 1/2 1/4 1/8, whatever.

Boot to the install CD, when you get to the partitioning, use custom partition. then select the windows parttion and resize. Reduce the partition by whatever number you wrote down and say OK. then tell mandrake to autoallocate, accept its suggestions and move on.

The other option is to reinstall windows, and not allocate the whole partition for windows new install. If you mess up and misguess the free space, you most likely be reinstalling windows anyway as if you resize the partition so that space where files are stored is lost on the partition, then the files are just lost. If they end up being some readme.txt like files everything will be OK, you'll just loose dsome data, if they end up being the /system/ folder, kiss windows goodby and reinstall.


My honest suggestion is to test out a CD installation of linux for a while, You bascially boot linux from a CD and use it that way. This requires no hard drive partitioning, if you like linux then proceed to either buying another harddrive to run linux off of, or musical chairing the partition space.