Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Texas
Distribution:
Posts: 22

XP and Mandrake 8.2 Dual Boot

( post #1)

Can anybody tell me if they have been able to do a Mandrake 8.2 and XP dual boot. I know it can be done but I want to know exactly how they did it. I dont want to try it on my own and then have it mess up and I'm stuck with having ot lose all my Windows files. I want to know everything. What did they use to partition the hard drive, what boot loader they used, etc...
PLEASE HELP!!

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Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Distribution: Suse_7.2 Gentoo_1.4 Solaris_9
Posts: 301

If windows is already installed, just install mandrake from the bootable CD. follow the default options and it will install LILO and you will be able to dual boot!

Nothing to it

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Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Coventry, U.K.
Distribution: Mandrake 8.2
Posts: 12

I would be careful using fatgods' procedure as you could inadvertantly overwrite the WinXP MBR and thus you would be able to Boot Linux but not XP. You will then need to do some recovery work which you do NOT want.

See this page for problems you could get into with this approach
http://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...&threadid=19284


You could use his procedure so long as you do NOT install LILO to the primary partition (which I imagine will contain XP). Instead load LILO to the same partition as the one in which your linux was installed (in particular where /boot resides). You would however be able to boot linux only via the boot floppy.

Additionally you could use the WinXP boot loader to boot linux which involves exporting the linux boot sector information to WinXP and then editting the boot.ini file in XP.

Here is a procedure you could use:

Note - If WinXP is already installed and uses your entire hard drive, then you will need a utility like partition magic to make space for Linux as I do not think that any current flavour of linux (Mandrake included) has tthe ability to resize a WinXP partition especially if it is using the NTFS file system.

Note - If WinXP is in the first partition and Linux is to go in the second then you must ensure that the first partition must not be greater than 8 Gbytes. This is to ensure that /boot and swap are within the 8 Gbytes boundary. Otherwise your Linux may not boot correctly.


################################################################################
Dual-booting Windows 2000/XP and Linux ----------- Last Updated : 12:44 28/04/02
################################################################################

1. Plan your layout first, then use fdisk to partition your drive properly.

2. Install Windows 2000/XP on the first partition.

3. Start your Linux Installation and install the /root directory into the second partition.

Install LILO into the first sector of your boot partition (usually /boot) and NOT in the MBR.

4. Make a boot disk during the Linux installation so that you can boot into it.

5. Now boot into Linux and copy the boot image from the boot sector.

To do this run: dd if=/dev/hdxn bs=512 count=1 of=/linux_bs.bin, where
/dev/hdxn is the location of /boot and /linux_bs.bin is the Linux boot image.
Copy this linux boot sector file to a safe and accesible location as follows:

If you are using NTFS for Windows 2000/XP then I suggest a floppy.
------------------------------------------------------------------
dd if=/dev/hda2 bs=512 count=1 of=linux_bs.bin
mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

cp linux_bs.bin /mnt/floppy
OR
dd if=/dev/hda2 bs=512 count=1 of=/mnt/floppy/linux_bs.bin

ls /mnt/floppy
umount /mnt/floppy

If you are using FAT32 for Windows 2000/XP then just copy it across.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
dd if=/dev/hda2 bs=512 count=1 of=linux_bs.bin
cp linux_bs.bin /mnt/win_c/linux_bs.bin

NOTE - You need to do this every time you make changes that result in
a change to LILO. Example if you update the kernel.

6. Reboot into Windows 2000/XP and copy this linux_bs.bin file into the root directory (C:\).

7. Edit c:\boot.ini and append the following line to the end of the file:

c:\linux_bs.bin="Linux".

8. Reboot your system and boot directly from the hard disk.

9. The Windows NT boot loader should now give you the option of booting into
either Windows 2000/XP or Linux. Try booting into both of them to see if
you were successful.

Enjoy your dual-boot system.

################################################################################
End of Procedure
################################################################################

Last edited by mosaddique on 04-28-2002 at 03:48 PM

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Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Distribution: Suse_7.2 Gentoo_1.4 Solaris_9
Posts: 301

fair enough. But just to add that I've installed mandrake 8.0, and suse 7.2 twice as I outlined above without any boot problems.

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: Confederate States of America
Distribution: Mandrake 9.0
Posts: 197

agree with fatgod...........done it many times with corel,turbo,RH7.1&7.2, mandrake8.0,8.1,8,2.............and a few others. Noooo probs at all.

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Registered: Apr 2002
Location: Coventry, U.K.
Distribution: Mandrake 8.2
Posts: 12

Fatgod and LinuzRulz,

Out of interest:

1. Were these installs of WinXP on FAT32 or NTFS?
2. Did you install LILO on the boot sector of the WinXP drive?
3. Which versions of Linux did you do this on?
4. Did you use a boot manager or just LILO?

Maybe there is a dimension to this that I have not yet understood and you can help me learn this.

Last edited by mosaddique on 04-28-2002 at 08:47 PM

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Registered: Jan 2002
Location: Confederate States of America
Distribution: Mandrake 9.0
Posts: 197

fat32, I don't really care for NTFS.
All the distros that I listed above.
I put lilo on the MBR.

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The tree of liberty must at various times, be refreshed with the blood of tyrants and patriots.

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Registered: Mar 2002
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
Distribution: Suse_7.2 Gentoo_1.4 Solaris_9
Posts: 301

1&2 I've installed on a system that had XP on NTFS partition and ME on a FAT32 partition and stuck LILO in the MBR.

3 SuSE 7.2 and mandrake 8.0

4 and YES! LILO is a cool boot manager, simply because it works

It's really easy to install recent versions of linux. Just boot off the CD.

Follow the default settings but read EVERYTHING that is offered during the installation process, it will help you begin to understand linux and how it works. Pay extra special attention to the partitioning.

If you do get any boot problems, write down as much as you can about the problem and boot from your winXP cd and perform an automatic recovery on everything. this will start windows booting again and you can ask for some more help from here

But dont worry about it, be brave, and you'll be fine

__________________
"We have no intention of shipping another bloated OS and shoving it down the throats of our users."
-- Paul Maritz, Microsoft group vice president

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Registered: Apr 2002
Location:
Distribution:
Posts: 18

LILO is what exactly?

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Registered: Jun 2001
Location: UK
Distribution: Gentoo 1.4, RedHat 7.2, Solaris 9, FreeBSD 5.0
Posts: 9465

quote:

---

Originally posted by Denton
LILO is what exactly?

---

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Registered: Nov 2002
Location:
Distribution:
Posts: 1

Guys,

I have a new computer and installed SUSE 7.3 to go along with XP. It has a dual hard drive setup with Linux installed on the 2nd drive (hdb1). During setup, I created a boot floppy and did NOT install Lilo on the MBR. I want to use the XP boot loader for this setup. I tried the normal procedure of using the "dd" command to create a 512 byte image of the boot sector, but the file created was empty. Any suggestions on what I can do? I am tired of having Linux boot from the floppy! Thanks...

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