cmus Posted September 6, 2004 Report Share Posted September 6, 2004 Well I am a total newbie and it looks like I screwed up. After I had a complete windows failure and lost a whole hard drive full of info, I decided to give Linux a try. After struggling through and learning how to get Mandrake working with my wireless card, external hard drives, cameras, and everything else, I have grown to really enjoy linux. But, I need windows on this computer too. All of the dual boot posts I have seen on the linux forums say to install windows first. Is there anything I can do to save all the settings and files I have for my smoothly operating linux setup before starting from scratch? I have a large unused partition on my hard drive that I could install windows on, but the posts here seem to say that is not the right way to go. I'm using Mandrake 10 and Win XP pro. Mahalo, Craig Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted September 6, 2004 Report Share Posted September 6, 2004 If you still have the 10.0 cd's, it will be easy. Install Windows as you normally would, then pop cd1 of 10.0 in your drive. When you get to the "Press Enter to install or Press F1 for more options", press F1. Once you get a prompt (almost immediately) type rescue, then choose the option to reinstall the bootloader and all will be well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cannonfodder Posted September 6, 2004 Report Share Posted September 6, 2004 If you still have the 10.0 cd's, it will be easy. Install Windows as you normally would, then pop cd1 of 10.0 in your drive. When you get to the "Press Enter to install or Press F1 for more options", press F1. Once you get a prompt (almost immediately) type rescue, then choose the option to reinstall the bootloader and all will be well. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Before you continue though, are you using any linux extended partitions? If so, you may want to create the Windows XP partitions ahead of time with the Mandrake Disk manager. Also, you may want to consider a second drive. Always nice to have and they tend to be cheap nowadays. Prevents issues where linux and windows clash! (extended partitions). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmus Posted September 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 Wow you guys are fast at responding, great Liquidzoo, I have the CDs so it sounds like it will be easy. MadDog - I am a newbie and am not really sure what a Linux extended partition is. Here is how my hard drive is et up right now: / - a 5.8 gig partition that shows up as journalized filesystem: ext3 swap - 494 mb linux swap partition /home - 14 gig journalized filesystem: ext3 and finally 35 gigs of empty space How would you recommend I set up the windows partitions? It would be nice to have a fat32 partition that could be accessed by both operating systems. Should I do this with Mandrake disk manager or during the windows installation? My /home partition will not be visible in windows right? Thanks so much for your help... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 If you want to share data, set up a fat32 partition to do so. I would say to create the partitions as fat32 in diskdrake (I don't think diskdrake can create ntfs yet) and convert one of them to ntfs if you so desire in the XP setup. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmus Posted September 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 Hmmm... Not working. I tried creating 2 new partitions with diskdrake - both fat32. Then I go to install windows on the first one and it won't work. Tells me that the partition is not windows compatible and I need to reformat it. I try that and it still doesn't work. Does windows xp need a different file system to be installed on? can I create it using diskdrake? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 Strange that it's not working. Did you allow diskdrake to format them to begin with? I don't have a lot of experience creating windows partitions with diskdrake, so I'm not entirely sure Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 Uninstall the boot loader first. Then do the windows installation. If windows wants to reformat the partitions, go ahead. But, do not let it format thwe entire drive. It shouldn't ask if you remove the boot loader first. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 Uninstall the boot loader first. Then do the windows installation. If windows wants to reformat the partitions, go ahead. But, do not let it format thwe entire drive. It shouldn't ask if you remove the boot loader first. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You can reinstall the bootloader using the rescue mode I suggested above once this is done. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
idud Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 Doesn't mean to make it more confusing, but i think that win$ should be installed in first partition (C:) or maybe D:\ if you have 98 installed on C:\. So what is the partition of your free space? If its hda1, it's fine, but if not... I don't know :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 WinXP doesn't care as much where it's installed as Win98 did (Win98 HAD to be on the 1st partition of the first HD, otherwise it would not run) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmus Posted September 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 Well after playing around for a while I got it to install windows. The only explanation I can think of for the initial problem of it not liking the install location was that it was too small. I made it a 5 gig partition at first and it wouldn't work, but when I gave windows the entire remaining 35 gigs as one partition, the install went smoothly. Now I have another problem. I got windows working, then I rebooted with my Mandrake CD 1, went to rescue mode, reinstalled the boot loader, and now I don't have any option to boot into windows. Do I have to put some code into the lilo config file for it to know windows is another option? Mahalo, Craig Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmus Posted September 7, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 (edited) Answering my own problem here, had to edit /etc/lilo.conf to include the following: other=/dev/hda3 label="WindowsXP" table=/dev/hda hda3 is the location of my windows partition. Hope this thread helps someone else. Thanks to all of you for helping me.... Edited September 7, 2004 by cmus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
liquidzoo Posted September 7, 2004 Report Share Posted September 7, 2004 Make sure you re-run lilo after you make any changes to it. As root in a console: lilo or lilo -v Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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