[lug] installing linux with NT Dual boot

[John Karns]

On Thu, 30 Aug 2001, Terry Branaman said:

> Windoze NT boot loaders allow multiple versions of Windoze on the same box;
> they just don't like other OSes, though I did get a workaround for this

I was reading something on the 'net recently where the writer said that he
had been unable to apply an NT (could have been w2k) security update SP on
his dual-boot box until he deleted the Linux partition!  Sounds like
perhaps even the SP's are booby-trapped now.


> working at one time. Win2K does support both FAT16 and FAT32, so you should
> be OK there - just don't install Win2K into your Win9x \WINDOWS directory.

I am reminded of a friend who was doing a lot of development under an
older version of NT (back in the good ol' days of 3.x) running on a FAT
partition.  It eventually got so fragmented that it crashed and burned,
necessitating a full re-install.  Of course any time you're dealing with a
FAT partition, the importance of running scandisk regularly really can't
be overstated.

I wish that the Linux kernel was more developed concerning it's ability to
write to NTFS, as it's nice to be able to write to the MSW side once in a
while.  OTOH, I usually mount the MSW partition (in the past I've always
chosen FAT) read only to avoid problems.  In particular, MSW doesn't react
very well to waking up from a suspended state under VMWare after one has
written to the fs while VMWare was suspended!


> When you install Windoze NT (Win2k is just NT 5), it will overwrite whatever
> boot loader is installed (e.g. LILO). Just use your Linux boot floppy to get
> into Linux and rerun lilo. When you reboot, if you select your Windoze

I recently got rid of a boot sector virus that way!  Just ran lilo to
overwrite the boot sector and zapped it.

----------------------------------------------------------------
John Karns                                        jkarns at csd.net