Multiboot [backwards - XP +98 + linux?]

davil

If I don't ask, I won't know - what's the easiest way to Multiboot when you already only have Windows XP PRO installed and you maybe want to put on linux and/or windows 9x or 2k.

Bear in mind I don't want to lose my data on the XP Partitions and I don't want to resize any of the partitions.

I have two drives at the minute,

1. IDE 40GB as Primary Master [not boot drive] and not partitioned.
2. Serial-ATA 120GB on Primary SATA Channel [boot drive - XP PRO] - 3 or 4 partitions. Need to keep all data.

Any time I have tried multiboot [windows] configs it works fine when I start with 98 and work my way up [98->2k->xp] etc. but when I tried to install 98 on the IDE drive and keep XP on the other drive I updated the boot.ini on the Serial ATA drive AND i had a menu but neither OS liked this config so I formatted the IDE drive and put the boot.ini back to just XP. I'm just not sure of exactly what I'm doing but I'm nearly there.

Is Bootmagic my best bet?? , and more importantly, is it stable???

davil

Originally posted by davil
1. IDE 40GB as Primary Master [not boot drive] and not partitioned.

Acutally what I meant here is it is one partition formatted with FAT32. also the Serial ATA partitions are all NTFS.

Duffman

Hrm... You should be able to boot as many OSs as you like, provided they all have their own partitions...

The Linux bootloader handles multibooting very well if you choose to install it, has options to hide different OSs from each other and all that... You'll have to format a dedicated partition to install Linux though, and considering that you'll need a swap partition for best performance, resizing your partitions may be necessary...

davil

Well I don't mind moving some data around to different partitions and deleting partitions and making new ones. I should be fine. Thought lilo might be the job, if that's what you're talking about. It's been a while since I installled linux on a machine. It's just the whole partition magic resizing thing. I don't wanna try that any time soon - a mate of mine lost a lot of data with that program.

All of his data actually.

Capt'n Midnight

98 will trash the others - it goes on first
Xp will recognise 98 - it goes next
Linux goes on last (Xp will of course trash it)

best way would be to setup a 16 MB partition at the start of the drive , then setup the Fat32 partition and mark it active and then install 98

Linux would put it's boot loader (LILO - cf Unix thread depending on your religous views) in the 16MB and then could start the other OS's

(though I still like C: to be 2GB Fat 16 )

Eurorunner

Originally posted by davil
Well I don't mind moving some data around to different partitions and deleting partitions and making new ones. I should be fine. Thought lilo might be the job, if that's what you're talking about. It's been a while since I installled linux on a machine. It's just the whole partition magic resizing thing. I don't wanna try that any time soon - a mate of mine lost a lot of data with that program.

All of his data actually.

I know absolutely zilch about linux (yet) but i recently put linux on my machine - dual booting with xp. The only glitch was with partition magic - my machine crashed when i tried to resize the partition with it. When i got it back up however, i resized the parition with Acronis Partition Expert without any probs whatsoever - so this might be the way to go for you.
Thereafter, loaded Redhat 9 - Grub took care of the dual booting quite nicely. Apart from the Partition Magic problem, i was amazed at how smoothly the whole thing went.

Now the real work begins....ie. getting to grips with Linux:eek:

Duffman

Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight
Linux goes on last (Xp will of course trash it)

XP won't know it's there, linux will know the XP's there of course...

Capt'n Midnight

[RE] Now the real work begins....ie. getting to grips with Linux

Get your hands on a Knoppix CD

Boots off the CD into GUI - does not touch the HDD unless you ask it to..
very handy being able to work in a command console ("DOS" prompt thingy") and being able to CTRL-ALT-F5 in to the GUI to read the Help...

Eurorunner

Originally posted by Capt'n Midnight
[RE] Now the real work begins....ie. getting to grips with Linux

Get your hands on a Knoppix CD

Boots off the CD into GUI - does not touch the HDD unless you ask it to..
very handy being able to work in a command console ("DOS" prompt thingy") and being able to CTRL-ALT-F5 in to the GUI to read the Help...

Got Knoppix too ..just need to put some time aside to play with it. If your saying i'm less likely to do any damage with knoppix, then i will definitely give it a spin first for a while:)

davil

Good stuff. I will give all that a try. U see I would mess around until I got it right but u know how long it takes to install XP and I didn't have the time.