null Posted May 31, 2005 Report Share Posted May 31, 2005 I am gonna make my FC3 machine a dual-boot win2k/Mandriva 2005 machine. I got the LE 2005 coverdiscs from the new Linux Format mag. Couple of questions first: 1. when I installed FC3 not too long ago, I "tried" to tell it to make a separate Home directory. How can I easily tell now if I really do have Home separate? In all my past installations, I always let the distro do its own thing - so I always ended up with Home under Root. 2. I will back up onto CDRW the stuff in Home that I don't want to lose, before proceeding, just in case. When I install win2k on top of FC3, will win2k nicely ask me where to put it (in other words, will it leave my Home patition alone?) or will it just use the whole HD? That reminds me, I have the win2k Upgrade CD - I wonder if I can even install it... 3. After win2k is installed, then I want to install Mandriva LE 2005. I only have one HD in this machine (200GB) so win & mandriva will be on the same HD. It would be nice if my original FC3 Home was still there, and Mandriva could just keep using it. Is this all the correct order of doing this...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shaner Posted May 31, 2005 Report Share Posted May 31, 2005 If you only have the upgrade CD, I'm about 85% sure that you won't be able to do the install. If you could Microsoft would be losing $, and they are not about to let that happen. My Dad had a 98SE upgrade disk, and could install from it. It is only to upgrade the OS that you have. 2. If it does install, Windows should recognize partitions that you have, pick the one that is not home. You will probably have to know by their sizes - I'm assuming, I haven't done this. But my windows doesn't even recognize my partitions, it sees them, but can't define them or access them. 3. I'm dual booting XP and LE2005 works nice, but my XP was already there, then I installed LE2005. I didn't have an existing Home Dir. I reccommend back up everything, install win2k if it will let you and then use the nice LE2005 partitioning tool to partition your hd. Worked great for me. :D Shaner Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
null Posted May 31, 2005 Author Report Share Posted May 31, 2005 yeah, I just have a bunch of family pics, and a bunch of mp3s in my home. I'll put those on CDRW. My other Home stuff - like spreadsheets & stuff, I think I already have all backed up on a usb stick. That way I can just install win2k on top of everything and not worry. If it asks me to put in a windoze 98 CD to verify my "upgrade" eligibility, I do have one of those. When you make a CDRW backup with k3b, can windoze access it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
arctic Posted May 31, 2005 Report Share Posted May 31, 2005 1. you cannot install win2k from an upgrade cd without having a working win98 system already installed. 2. windows will NOT see your linux partitions (=it will not write to them). you can erase all partitions (and thus their contents) only using fdisk from a boot-floppy, but windows itself will tell you that you only have one partition on your hdd (the fat32 partition). and only with additional tools like partitionmagic, you can access linux partitions from within win2k and reformat them. 3. you will need to install windows first, then le2005. and you will need a bootdisk in order to do so as long as you have a linux bootloader in your mbr and do not format the mbr 4. le2005 has a very good partition-manager. go to "custom partitoning" and you will be able to use the existing /home partition. 5. windows should be able to read the cdrw afaik Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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