Linux Windows Dualboot
How to Dual Boot and Install Linux and Windows Together
Recently a co-worker decided that he wanted to turn some free
space on his Windows portable into a Linux partition. His couple day
odyssey is semi-recorded here so that you can learn from his mistakes
and successes.
- Before you start, the first thing you should do is printout the
entire partition table. You may have to recreate it by hand so
make sure it has all of the cylander/track information.
- When he started, he had Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2000 Pro
on his portable. The Win2k Server happened to be in an extended
partition which caused him a lot of grief.
- He initially moved some of the windows partitions around and
resized them using Partition Magic. This worked well to a
point.
- Next, he chose a free block as his swap space in Linux and
Windows and loaded RedHat 8.0 into the other free block with grub as
his bootloader. Lilo will not work if you are adding Linux to a
Windows installed computer.
- When he rebooted, however, he found out that although he could
boot to the Linux box and the Server, he could not boot to the Pro
partition.
- Back in Linux trying to fix the problem, he made the unfortunate
choice of using fdisk which completely blew away his extended
partition information. Supposedly fdisk /mbr will work if used from
Linux.
- He also learned that if you use lilo it will corrupt the windows
Master Boot Record. This stops it from booting but will not damage
the windows partition. You should always use the grub loader.
- To fix the boot block, you can boot Windows from installation CD
choose Recover Console and run FIXMBR to fix it.
- There is a way to make lilo work with Windows first but it didn't
work for his. Check out this Linux
and Windows 2000 page for details.
- If you do screw up your partition table, the miracle tool is gpart.
It scans the block headers and looks for partition magic values and
can fix a corrupted partition table. It is important to print out
your partition table beforehand. If you have multiple Windows installs, the grub bootloaded can be
installed to point to the Windows dual boot loader. From there you
can choose the windows partition you want to boot.
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