The last couple times I've tried dual booting with Linux (about 6 months ago) I'd always end up without access to XP. Between the chainloader error and a missing ntldr.exe (or whatever it is) I haven't been able to get a dual boot to work. And yes I tried a bunch of different suggestion that was supposed to fix the problem but never did. Of course I might have managed to screw that up somehow

So basically I'm wondering if this problem has been solved. I know that Mandrake 8 or 9 didn't have this problem and neither did some other earlier distro's and that it's a fairly recent issue.


My second question has been asked probably way too many times but I would still like a bit of advice. My comp is a little dated (amd 1.333, 32meg geforce, 512mg ram), so I'd like a distro with the least amount of bloat (scratch Mandrake and Red Hat). My other problems with other installs I've had is compiling programs (usually confusing as there seems to be 1000 different ways of doing it) and of course a ton of dependencies which makes installing a simple program and full day affair for me (not to mention getting a program installed and then having no idea where to find it after lol). I'm more than willing to learn the intricacies of linux but wouldn't mind a distro that will pretty much do all that for me but still leave me the opportunity to learn how to do that myself.

Well, this is long enough for my first post. Thanks for your time.

If there's been a dual boot problem in Linux it's the first I've heard of it.
You don't state what bootloader you attempted to use. Was it Lilo or Grub or something else? I've used both of the above over the last four years on four different distros without the problem you describe.
If you want a distro that will solve dependancies for you, then Debian would probably suit. As for bloat, do a custom install instead of a full install. That way you just have the packages you need and can have just one or two desktops instead of six or seven.

I'm surprised you haven't heard about it but if you are curious here a link for you

Chainloader problems

And I believe it was LILO that I installed. Like I said it's been a while for me.


Note: Yes I'm pretty much a complete Linux newbie so any suggestions regarding a distro should keep that in mind.

Your computer IS dated, but it will hold up Redhat (Fedora)/Mandrake just fine. My comp (AMD 1.6ghz, 32mb nforce onboard, 512mb ram) runs Fedora Core 3 and SuSE just fine . Fedora (and Mandrake? Can't remember) has gcc and the like, but also RPM. So, if you want to install programs, you could do it the quick and easy way: or the less quick, but easyish way:
It's all good

Fedora, Mandrake, SuSE, Ubuntu, they'll all look after newbies like you and me (even though I run Gentoo, I have no clue what it is doing, or what I did in the install - RTFM is the way of the future )

But, it's all up to you about what distro you want. I like FC3, and Ubuntu, and I'm attempting to get an uncorrupted Slack download. It's all your choice.

And, about the chainloader problem, FC3 (and more distros these days) default (or at least offer) to GRUB as the bootloader. I haven't had any issues with GRUB and Windows XP, 2003, and Longhorn.

Originally posted by Nodscene

I'm surprised you haven't heard about it but if you are curious here a link for you

Sorry, but this is just a link to a Google Search for answers to a variety of dual boot/chainloader problems. Still doesn't mean that there is "a problem" with Linux. For what it's worth, I much prefer GRUB to LILO. It's far more configurable.