im sure the answer to this question has been posted already somewhere but i cant find what i need to fix the problem so im gonna ask anyways. just to clarify i've looked around quite a bit but havn't found anyone talking about this problem specifically. if i missed it i appologize for wasting your time.

just for a worning im about as noob as it gets. here's my problem im trying to dual boot with windows XP and rh9. i first installed xp and made two partions while doing so the first is a 100mb one (intended for grub) and the second a 25gb on for windows leaving about 32gb left. i then installed rh9. my end partition scheme is as so

dev/hda1 /boot 100mb
dev/hda2
dev/hda5 xp 25gb
dev/hda6 / 8gb
dev/hda7 swap 2gb

after i installed rh9 and wrote grub to the mbr i wasn't able to boot to windows. GRUB recognized that there was a dos OS there but when i clicked to load it is said something about bla bla bla chainloader+1 and then just stood still.

im doing all of this on my laptop and don't have a floppy drive. i havn't been able to find a way to make a bootable cd that will actuall boot the os and not just a rescue menu for either rh9 or xp. i wouldn't mind booting rh9 from a cd (for now) if anyone has any ideas on how to do that.

i was also wondering why disk druid won't let me make a vfat partition larger than 2gigs.
i don't mind starting all over also so if anyone has a better idea on how to lay out my partition scheme im all ears.

i don't per-say need an answer, a direction would be very helpful too. thanks

Apparently there is someone else in the universe trying to do this.

Try going here:

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux...w2k-HOWTO.html

This is a good starting point for your review.

Let me know if any of it helped you.
I am using a LapTop with WinXP as the primary partition (20g),
Second primary partition is 8g,
Extended partition for Linux swap (sized at 1.5 time your Laptop's memory)

First time around, I whacked the NT MBR such that the GRUB would start (nice) but would hang if I picked WinXP..could get into Fedora at that point fine (nice) but efficiently rendered my first primary partition useless.

I had to get *a friend* involved to FDISK the partition and then installed WinXP again with NTFS.

At this point I too am looking for advice on how to get Linux RH Fedora set up.
Have Partion Magic 8 will travel.
Looks like I need to avoid the MBR record like the plague.
And I may or may not need to use BootMagic if GRUB can replace it.
In the final analysis, I think I need to carve out another primary partion *before* the first (50mb) according to PowerQuest FAQs, but am not sure why.

I would just as soon avoid reinstalling WinXP again if I can help it (there's another three days of my life I'll never get back again).

Let me know what you get from the above URL and what you think is best to do.

thanks for the help linux_junky the site definetally helped my understanding of the situation a little better. what i don't get is how people just ran the rh9 setup and then GRUB just worked fine. i did all the basic stuff just like anyone else with no results. if anyone has any ideas why GRUB didn't work im all ears.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!!!! I went through all of the instructions on the site and found it to be a breeze to get the dual boot up and working. Im not sure if this is helpful at all but just reinstalled everything and it made it a lot easier to deal with. if you need any ideas on how to set up your partitions this is what i did.

hda1 30mb ntfsboot primary
hda2 100mb /boot primary
hda3 55gb extended
hda5 25gb WinXP logical
hda6 8gb / logical
hda7 22gb fat32share logical
hda4 2gb linux-swap primary


i know reinstalling can be a huge pain in the ass but it makes things a lot less complex, and at the end its kinda nice starting over, like you just got ride of come VD tha has been bothering you for weeks,.... uhhh so im told. anyways good luck and thanks for the help you saved me butt.

ps "parted" is by far the best program you could use to manipulate partitions. if you need anymore help id be glad to help if i can or even to help research if possible, don't be afraid to drop a line whenever.

been looking around for the instructions to dual boot XP and Linux, but didnt really find much.
i hope your instructions work as I am planning to dual boot on my new PC.
was going to try it on my old hard drive to see if it would work, but hey, it is dying so theres not much i could do.
gonna try it tomorrow, fingers cross.

Well,

I've figured it out. I now have my laptop setup to boot to either WinXP or Redhat Linux Fedora.

Partition Magic 8 helps, so if you are interested in installing Linux to an existing Windows partition, it really works great.

Installing a dual boot scenario here assumes you have a pc with a BIOS that supports the LBA (logical block addressing) that gets around the old 1024 cylinder 8gig boot partition size limit of olden days. Most new pcs support this, but you should check to be sure.
With LBA the GRUB boot loader can then be anywhere across the drive.

In Windows XP, be sure to close all other apps (including ones on the tray).

*** BE SURE TO BACK UP ANYTHING FROM YOUR HARD DRIVE YOU DON'T WANT TO LOSE AND CREATE THE RESCUE DISKS (2) THAT PARTITION MAGIC SUGGESTS YOU MAKE!!! ***

What I did follows:

1) assuming your drive is big enough, create a new primary Linux partition of about 8gigs, taking space away from the Windows partition

2) create another logical partition at the beginning of this (Linux) partition of about 1.5 times the amount of memory your pc has, in my case I set up roughly 750mb to be used as the Linux logical partitioned swap file. Putting it at the beginning makes the Linux swap more efficient and faster. When you do this you will be 'taking away' space from the Linux partition, not the Windows partition.

3) Apply the changes made in steps 1 and 2 (the pc may need to reboot if you have any open files that need to be closed) and it will carve out the new partitions for you in about 15-20 minutes tops and then boot back up to Windows.

4) Go into partition magic and set the 'active' partition to the Linux partition and be sure to set the Windows partition to a status of 'None' (meaning visible) NOT HIDDEN which partition magic may try to do by default when you set Linux partition active.

5) mount your Linux bootable install CD in the cd drive (be sure your bios boot sequence is set to hunt for removable devices, then CD, then hard disks) and reboot the pc.

6) since windows is no longer the active partition, and there is no o/s on the linux partition, your pc will boot up to the cd. Follow the install steps. You don't need to format the /hda2 drive as Partition Magic formats the unix 'inodes' for you (nice).

7) Be sure to tell the install to NOT put the GRUB (Grand Universal Boot Loader) in the MBR (master boot record), but rather place it in the first sector of the Linux /boot partition.

8) When install is complete, reboot, and GRUB will load but will only show Linux as a bootable O/S. Boot up Linux.
9) Login in as root.
10) Right-click on the desktop and open a terminal window to get to an o/s prompt.
11 Type dd to determine where your /boot partition is located.
(on mine is was off of root /boot)
12) cd to the grub directory which is below it (in my case it was /boot/grub)
13) edit the grub.conf file with vi editor and add these lines at the bottom:
title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
14) save the file and exit (:qw in vi).
15) exit the terminal window and go to the start menu and shut down and restart your pc.

At that point you should see two options in the GRUB menu to pick from, one for RedHat Linux Fedora, one for Windows XP.

If you pick Windows XP and it runs for a minute like it did for me and then errors with can't find autochk, etc., then it means that you left the windows partition 'hidden'.

If that is so, then you can boot up with your rescue disks and set it to 'none' (meaning visible).

With that one correction of unhiding the Windows partition I was then able to dual boot!!

That should do it.

Regards to the Linux Users Community,

let me first thank you for the support.
before i get my hands dirty, i am wondering if i dual boot the good and the evil, i mean Linux and XP respectively, would i be able to swap files between them?

only if you have a fat partition somewhere on your hard drive. linux can read fat but not ntfs.

would it be possible to install XP in the Fat partition or change it to Fat partition? i know XP is the ntfs thingy. or is it possible to create a new partition, say 10GB to store files and using them on both systems.

Goash, i have no idea what I am talking about!!

probably something like this:

hda1 30mb ntfsboot primary
hda2 100mb /boot primary
hda3 55gb extended
hda4 2gb linux-swap primary
hda5 25gb WinXP logical
hda6 8gb / logical
hda7 22gb fat32share logical

Copied from Fische

so the files cab be stored in hda7, and can be used by both?!

thats what i do and it works fine for me, the kinda tricky thing is that disk druid wont let you make a vfat partition larger than 2gb. I would recomend using "parted" or partition magic 8 if you have it.

i am planning to use PartitionMagic 8 to partition the hard drive.

i think i should be able to create partition for /boot, linux-swap primary, /logical and probably fat32share logical with PartitionMagic,

but how do i make the ntfsboot primary, extented and WinXP logical when i have XP already installed?

also, what is the 'extented' partition for?

thanks for your patient.

there are three types of partitions, primary, extended, and logical. primary partitions can't be broken up into any other size divisions. Extended partitions on the other hand can be broken up into smaller divisions called logical partitions. you can only have either 4 primary partitions, or 3 primary partitions and 1 extended partition. you want to make the extended partitions so that you can have more than just 4 different partitions. logical partitions, in a sense, are inside extended partitions. inside an extended partition you can have as many logical partitions as you want (I think).

To go about things the way i did it it would be termendously easier to just start from scratch and reinstall everything. If you cant do that though, Ive heard that you can resize partitions with partition magic 8 by taking information from the front of the partition, instead of the back (only what ive heard not really sure if it is true).

One thing you have to watch for is that you have to make sure you are making your logical partitions inside of your extended partitions, and if your using parted you have to make sure that you don't make your last primary partition until you are done making all your logical partitions. Once all 3 primary partitions are made and your 1 extended partition is made you cant make any more logical partitions even if you have space in your extended partion to do so (only my experience with parted, may not be true).

now in response to your question "but how do i make the ntfsboot primary, extented and WinXP logical when i have XP already installed?" im not really sure if you can you might have to start over, though maybe not.

if you post what your current partitions are and how you'd like to set them up (tell me how many gigs for xp how many for linux...) and i will see if i can come up with something that would work for you.

good luck

thanks for your support

at the moment, i have a brand new 80G hard drive, and i am planning to give 30G to XP and 50G to linux (Mandrake 9.2 or fedora, havent decided yet, its a tough choice).

as it is a new hard drive, there is no XP on it just yet. i assumed that i have to install XP question, hence the 'XP alrady installed question".

so how should i go about it?

well this is what i did

first i booted from my Redhat 9 cd and went to the recover console by typing in linux rescue. at the next prompt type in parted to get into the parted program. from there is where you are gonna make all your partitions.

type in help to bring up the commands in parted, they are pretty simple, kind of daunting at first, but really no big deal.

for an 80gig id probably recommend

hda1 = 50mg this will be your windows boot partition (make it primary)

hda2 = 100mb this will be your linux boot partition (make it to primary)

hda3 = 1gig-2gig depending on your ram this will be your linux swap partition I herd that swap partitions somehow work better when they are in front of linux (primary)

hda4 = 78gigs, or the rest of the free space on the drive make this partition(extended)

hda5 =30gigs to windows xp make this partition (logical)

hda6 = 15gigs to RH9 (logical)

hda7 = 15 gigs to Mandrake 9.2 (logical) (why not have both?)

hda8 = 18 gigs or so for a fat32 partition you can use to swap file between the operating systems (logical)

you don't have to adjust the file system to any of the partitions except the fat32 partition (be sure to change hda8 to fat32 in parted). the OSes will format the rest or the drives they need to use for you.

that should pretty much fill up your harddrive. Im a noob to so its probably not the most efficient way to do things but i think it is a very flexible solution to at least test.

It has been recommended to me by multiple people to not get to attached to your system right out of the gate. Its best to expect to reinstall everything in about a month or two after you've learned more about the OSes and about how you want to manage them.

also i've been hearing stuff about LVM partitions, they sound like the best solution but i have no idea how to use them or what they are about.

after you've partitioned your hard drive exit parted and restart your computer. insert your windows xp install cd and follow the directions.

then install rh9, be sure NOT!!! to install GRUB to the MBR!!! there is an advanced options menu somewhere during the install that you have to click to bring up a menu that asks "install GRUB to MBR" or "install GRUB to the first sector of the partition" the latter choice is the one you want to choose.

i've never done a triple install, but plan to soon, but it shouldn't be much different than a dual boot. mandrake 9.2 will probably ask you to install GRUB again although it may not, I don't think you would have to.

after everything is installed then follow the instructions on this web page.

http://www.geocities.com/epark/linu...-w2k-HOWTO.html (the actual link is at the top of the page)

you might have to do a little configuring with GRUB to get mandrake and RH to work but by following the instructions i can almost guarantee that you will at least get xp and one of your Linuxes to work.

good luck. and be sure to post your results.

i am going to use parted to partition, and i think i am going to use your setup,

hda1 = 50mg windows boot partition (make it primary)
hda2 = 100mb linux boot partition (make it to primary)
hda3 = 2gig linux swap partition (primary)
hda4 = 78gigs(extended)
hda5 =30gigs to windows xp make this partition (logical)
hda6 = 30 gigs to Mandrake 9.2 (logical)
hda7 = 18 gigs or so for a fat32 partition, swap file between the operating systems (logical)

and i have checked out the parted command, should be the following:

mkparts PART-TYPE FS_TYPE START END

looking at your previos post about the primary and extented partition order, how do i go about that? do i have to do:

mkparts hda1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7 then hda3?

also, the PART-TYPE should be hda1-7, right?

thanks