[ILUG] Dual booting in Windows 2000

[Paul Askins]

On Mon, 24 Sep 2001 12:40:59 +0100, the words of 
"Catherine Ansbro" <cansbro at eircom.net> did resemble:
> Would dual-booting in 2K & linux present the same risks as
> NT & linux?

Yes, Win2000 boot loader is essentially the same as NT's (if not exactly
the same).

> My plan was, after 2000 was safely installed on all our computers, to
> "sneak" in & partition one of them for 2000 & linux.  Can this plan be
> saved?   On another website I read that one should always install
> Windows
> first, as it will always "take over" everything else.  That's why I
> thought
> I should put the 2000 on first, then partition for linux. . .

Best option would be to use dos Fdisk or NT's disk manager to wipe the
partitions on the disk.  Then make a primary partition of maybe half the
disk's size (or as big as you want for Win 2000).  Then install Win 2000
on this partition.  Next, install Linux on the remaining space using
whatever partitioning scheme you need.  Any of the new distros will
suggest a partitioning scheme for you but they're not always the best. 
When you get to the bootloader section choose to install lilo on you Linux
root partition.  This might be /dev/hdb2 if you installed / as the second
primary partition.  At this point, make sure you created a boot floppy
aswell beacuse Linux wont be bootable yet.  When install is finished, the
computer reboots and you should boot from the Linux floppy.  You'll need
to get the Linux boot record from where ever it was installed, so as root
do:
dd if=/dev/hdb2 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1
I think this is the correct syntax, but I'm not sure as it's been a while
since I done this.  Anyway, copy the file /bootsect.lnx to a floppy disk
and reboot into Win 2000.
Edit the file c:\boot.ini  which contains the NT bootloader instructions. 
Again, not sure of the exact syntax but you need to add something like
linux = c:\bootsect.lnx
which will add the option "linux" to the NT bootloader at startup.
Some searching on google might give the exact syntax.  Just don't change
any of the existing lines!

> I have to be careful, as our computer friend says "if I put anything
> other
> than Windows on our machines it's the last I'll see of him!"  So I don't
> want to crash the whole system by doing something stupid.

Doesn't sound like much of a friend :)  I wouldn't be too sorry to see the
back of this person if this was the sort of answer he gave me to an O/S
question.


-- 
Paul Askins <:)
Email:  Paul Askins <paul.askins at adbvdesign.analog.com>

Blore's Razor:
	Given a choice between two theories, take the one which is funnier.