Goal: Dual boot Winxp and Slack 10.1 on one HDD with Grub the easiest way

I know slack comes with LILO but I have SuSe 9.1 and 9.3 pro on cd.
Can someone walk me through

Allready have Win XP installed and running.

Follow these instructions substituting grub for lilo.

http://www.slackbook.org/html/book.html#BOOTING-DUAL

OK I've got slack and winxp on my computer. Problem is I don't have the option of loading linux.
Can some one help me set this option up.

Which of the two OS's are you booting now?

If you can boot your linux system. Either install lilo using liloconfig or edit /etc/lilo.conf, both require that you rerun lilo (/sbin/lilo). Simplest way to fiddle with the bootloader without breaking anything is insatlling to a floppy.

If you want grub instead of lilo download from here (thats what I did when I needed a more tweakable bootloader than lilo).

If you cant boot your linux system boot from the install CD with something similar to
bare.i root=hda2 noinitrd ro

Where you replace bare.i with your kernel of choice and hda2 with your root partition. This lets you start the linux system and you can install lilo or grub as you wish.

Did you install lilo/grub to the slackware root partition (the superblock). If so, you can boot into slackware off of a boot disk (if you made one) or the install CD. You need to get the first 512 bytes of the Linux root partition and store it on the Windows XP partition. Follow the instructions (from the link I posted above) under the section:

7.3.1.3 Deprecated Windows NT Hack

Your almost there.

heltreko

I used the instructions
"If you cant boot your linux system boot from the install CD with something similar to
bare.i root=hda2 noinitrd ro"

Linux seems to load but all the text running up the screen end with an error message

the superblock could not describe..... something corupt????
NOW what

Is hda2 actually where the system is installed?

yes thats where it is
my HDD looks like this
Hda1 FAT32 4gb
Hda2 reiserts 10gb
hda3 FAT32 6gb

Is there an easier way to set this up. Like through a windows bootloader maybe?

There should be a easy way, but unless you can boot into Slack, I'm afraid I can't help. I have had many multi-boot setups installed including NT4, 2K, and XP. I haven't ever used grub as a boot loader though.

Did you make a boot floppy during the install?
and can you get into your slackware at all?

If you can't, you might want to download a live cd, (knoppix, or Slackware 10.0 disk 2) and try and look at your hard drive contents just to be sure which partition is /

If you use SW 10.0 disk 2, you can just hit return at the boot prompt and let it load,
then post the output of fdisk -l (fdisk -small L ) it should tell you what each partition is.

I noticed that you didn't list a swap partition, could that be the problem? ( anyone else? )

Ok this is what I've done so far.
1. Installed windows xp
2. Installed Linux (Slackware 10.1)
3. # dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/tmp/bootsect.lnx bs=1 count=512
4. Copied boostsect.lnx into hda3

*** Problem***
When load XP and went to copy bootsect.lnx to my C:, I got this mesage
The disk in drive E is not formatted.

I had some files in that drive now what?

Not sure why are you getting a message about E,

If your partition information is correctly stated above,then while in XP you will ONLY SEE C: and D: on your hard drive.

Windows Can't (doesn't care ) about your reiserfs on hda2.
It will see hda1 as C: and hda3 as D:

Sorry I can't be of more help, but if both windows partitions are indeed FAT32, you could have just done all your work while you were still booted in Slack.

as in # dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/windows_mount_point/bootsect.lnx bs=1 count=512

that would have allowed you to write the file directly to the FAT32 partition.

Then #vi /windows_mount_point/boot.ini to edit the XP bootloader.

You could always cp the file to a usb key drive and then copy that back in XP.

On my computer D: is my shared partition. So I cp the bootsect.lnx into hda3 - D: - now windows says that its not formated.

So since I got that message I thought I had done something wrong. Then what i did was copy it to my C: drive.

NOW windows dosen't even load. My computer keeps rebooting.

Why don't you just install LILO to MBR? It will add Windows automatically.
If you really installed Slack, just boot with Install CD, set up /dev/hda2 as your / without formatting, and finally jump to step "Configure system".