enolagay Posted March 1, 2005 Report Share Posted March 1, 2005 (edited) hi. i know i spelt it wrong. seriously though. i have read many posts on here and elsewhere on how to dual boot using two hard drives. only there is so much conflicting information regarding this. i would really like to know how to do this properly. im no computer expert but not totally silly. im mean, what jumper settings are needed, i.e what is cable select? i thought that would do it! basically i have xp on one drive and mandrake on the slave. just another piece of info, when i now go into windows i cannot find the mandrake drive yet its there because when i connect it as a master only it works fine. surley there is an easy way to alter something in xp to give me an option on initial start up. any help written easy to understand is most welcome. surley there is an easy way? regards all. Edited March 1, 2005 by enolagay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest txlonghorn Posted March 1, 2005 Report Share Posted March 1, 2005 I have the same setup, with Win on hda and Mandrake 9.2 on hdb. First, cable select refers to the little black jumpers on your hard drive case. If they are in the cable select position, then the order of master/slave is determined by their positions on the data cable. The first hard drive on the cable is always the master. Now, you have a problem because there is nothing in XP to allow you to boot linux. Bill Gates doesn't care about your linux. What I would do in your situation is start linux, as master, (hda) with xp running as slave. Linux is smart enough to "see" the xp drive. Then you can use LiLo to create a dual boot in the Master Boot Record of the Linux drive that will boot either OS. I think that would work. Although my setup is reversed, with Win being on the master. There are other options, like if Win has to be on hda. The next best option would be to create a Grub floppy that you can easily edit to boot either drive, and then from there you could install Grub to the MBR of hda Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest txlonghorn Posted March 1, 2005 Report Share Posted March 1, 2005 Oh... You said that you can boot Mandrake when it is the only drive. How is it booting? Is LiLo installed? Or Grub? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enolagay Posted March 2, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 2, 2005 (edited) hi its lilo. and i have now put xp as slave and mandrake as master. i just need to know now how to edit lilo or something as i get no option at booting up. iv also just found some more info saying i should have kept mandrake as the slave and somehow installed just the linux boot loader onto my xp's drive. argggggggg. the more i look into this the harder it gets! i just really need some easy instructions how to do it, then i'll be laughing. many thanks 4 replying rsvp Edited March 2, 2005 by enolagay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest txlonghorn Posted March 3, 2005 Report Share Posted March 3, 2005 hi its lilo. and i have now put xp as slave and mandrake as master. i just need to know now how to edit lilo or something as i get no option at booting up. iv also just found some more info saying i should have kept mandrake as the slave and somehow installed just the linux boot loader onto my xp's drive. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> There is no problem having the XP as slave, I don't believe. The most important thing you have to remember about lilo is that anytime you edit the lilo config, you have to go to a command line and run lilo, like this /sbin/lilo -v Don't forget that. So, to edit lilo, you just open up the /etc/lilo.conf file with a text editor, and edit. Right now it has something like this to boot linux image=/boot/vmlinuz label="linux" root=/dev/hda1 initrd=/boot/initrd.img append="devfs=mount hdc=ide-scsi acpi=ht splash=silent" vga=788 read-only What you need is to add something like this, to boot Win as slave (hdb) other=/dev/hdb1 label="windows" table=/dev/hdb That is what boots my Windows, but I don't have xp. xp might want something like # For booting Windows NT or Windows95 title Windows rootnoverify (hd1,0) makeactive chainloader +1 Then save. Then you do the /sbin/lilo -v after you are done - BEFORE you reboot! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest txlonghorn Posted March 3, 2005 Report Share Posted March 3, 2005 xp might want something like# For booting Windows NT or Windows95 title Windows rootnoverify (hd1,0) makeactive chainloader +1 Oops, my mistake - that last part about "title Windows...etc" is GRUB, not lilo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enolagay Posted March 3, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 3, 2005 think i got that! thanks, i'll try it and get back. thankyou 4 your help :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enolagay Posted March 5, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 hi i need to dual boot from 2 seperate hard drives, and need to know how to actually get into lilo and what the 'exact' commands are to type and how to re-save the new settings. someone did tell me but it didnt work. maybe his spelling was wrong or something. thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted March 5, 2005 Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 post your present lilo.conf and also the locations of the two disks (/dev/hda1 etc) also does one presently boot? indicate which one hopefully sort you out in no time.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted March 5, 2005 Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 i need to dual boot from 2 seperate hard drives, and need to know how to actually get into lilo and what the 'exact' commands are to type and how to re-save the new settings.someone did tell me but it didnt work. maybe his spelling was wrong or something. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> enolagay - I have merged your new topic into the old one. It doesn't help to start a new thread when you still have another one running on the same topic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
enolagay Posted March 6, 2005 Author Report Share Posted March 6, 2005 (edited) thanks in the bootloader section of the control centre its like this at the moment.............. bootloader to use.....................lilo with graphical menu boot device /dev/hda delay before booting default image 10 the 3 boxes below are un-ticked. i have an option to boot from grub or textbased lilo in the first line. and 3 or 4 different boot devices in the second line. but all end with 'a' before i go any further, should i now set drake as slave and xp as master? anyone??????? thanks Edited March 8, 2005 by enolagay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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