What's best way to dual-boot Windows and Linux?

[jasong]

As per someone's advice in irc, I installed Ubuntu first on my computer.(comment: It gave me a choice of setting up the hard drive totally manually, or installing on the largest partition. I wanted to choose the partition, but it didn't give that option. How stupid is that?)

I then went to install 64-bit Windows XP. It went on the 20GB partition that was supposed to have Linux on it(basically, the partition that was supposed to contain video, music, and programs that I wanted but weren't part of Windows[DC stuff mostly]got Ubuntu, Windows was installed where Ubuntu was supposed to go, and where Windows was supposed to go is 4GB of unused space)...Now I have 64-bit Windows XP installed and two fairly big problems. (1) Windows XP refuses to connect to the Internet, and (2) while my Linux installation may be totally intact, I haven't been able to access it since installing Windows XP64.

Ideally, I'd first like to solve the problem of dual-booting first, since that box is doing two projects which are updated manually(in Windows). I'm pretty sure Linux will be able to connect if I can get it back, since I confirmed that it had a connection before installing Windows on another partition.

[paulunderwood]

man grub-install

After booting from the live install cd, maybe this would do it from a terminal:

sudo mount /dev/hda5 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/hda
sudo umount /mnt

Note that you will have to make sure that "hda5" is replaced with what you have on your set up. Ditto "hda".

I might be wrong

[paulunderwood]

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Re...tallingWindows

[Xyzzy]

The easiest way is to partition the disk the way you want first. Then install Windows (which will choose the first primary partition) and then Linux. Grub will figure out where everything is and it will just work.

Personally, we have one dedicated Windows box for silly stuff and just install Linux on everything else.

Keep it simple!

[paulunderwood]

Yes, it is easier to install Windows first. Starting from scratch (which might be easier for you, jasong):

Run windows' "fdisk" program but don't choose the whole disk for NTFS (format). At this stage you could choose to set up another partition ready to be formatted with windows' FAT32 filing system. You will now have a partition ready for NTFS formatting to contain the windowsXP64 base and a FAT32 partition ready to be formatted with FAT32, plus some of this disk unpartitioned ready for the linux install. The FAT32 is useful because you can write to it from windows and linux. Put your music here and it should be fairly big.

So I might set up:
partition 1 is primary using windows' fdisk ready for NTFS
partition 2 is primary using windows' fdisk ready for FAT32

install windows

Install linux and let it choose the partitioning for itself from the free space.

(At the moment I have two disks in my computer. One is plugged in for linux and the other one gets plugged in instead when windows is needed, which is very rarely )

(This thread should be in the linux section.)

[jasong]

It took a personally thought up hack to accomplish the task, but success!!! Kind of...

I booted the Linux cd and it came up with the choices. The only choice I could use, where I could even hope of succeeding was one of the Guided Setup options, but then it insisted on installing on the largest partition. My hack involved making a bunch of 15GB partitions until the one I wanted Linux installed to(20GB partition) was the biggest. Then, I decided I wanted swap to be 5GB(The smallest partition that wasn't already used was used as swap), so I did a bit of juggling to accomplish that. Then I did the Guided Setup. And, lo and behold, a screen that gave me choices as to what system to boot to, as well as some other stuff which I didn't really understand.

Now, the bad news: When it booted into Windows, specifically the place where you enter your password, neither the mouse, nor the keyboard would respond to input.

[paulunderwood]

Maybe you messed with the windows partition by creating all those partitions. Did you leave it alone?

Instead of guided, you could have tried the manual option, probably experiencing less pain.

Assuming the NTFS partition is intact, if you now repair windows with the windows CD it will overwrite the boot sector with it's own bootloader. You already have the file "/boot/grub/menu.lst" in place on your linux partition, with info about how to boot windows. After repairing windows follow the steps I gave above to make grub use this "menu.lst" file.

If you need to see your partitions (from the live CD) type into a terminal:

sudo fdisk -l /dev/hda

It would be helpful to me to see the output from this.

Make notes of what you are doing with pen and paper.