[lug] Re: Dual-booting FC1 with WinXP on the second HD -- Solved

[bof]

bof wrote along about the end of May or beginning of June:

> I have a two hard disk computer with multiple Linux/FreeBSD versions 
> on partitions on both disks. FC1 is installed exclusively on the first 
> HD and Grub to its MBR to load all the OSes. I'm thinking about trying 
> Windows XP and have a free partition as the first one on the second HD.
>
> Is there a way that I can install XP into this partition and then load 
> it using Grub on the first?
>
> I've done Windows-Linux dual boots, both on single and a dual HD 
> systems. But these were with Windows on the first partition of
> the first HD, and Linux elsewhere. The Windows XP Resource Guide 
> implies that XP can be installed on partitions other than the first, 
> and while it goes into detail on how to do this with various versions 
> of Windows, it of course, does not mention Linux, for some strange 
> reason <g>.



This e-mail will describe how I solved the problem I posed in my 
original question. I got several comments by way of answers, some of 
them useful. For those who took the time to answer, I thank you.

I wasn't brave enough to try this experiment on my good computer, so I 
did it on an old test machine, a PII 450 with 384 MB RAM running RH 7.3 
on the first drive. (BTW, I found the performance of WinXP on this 
system to be comparable to RH 7.3 with KDE, which surprised me, as I 
thought I would need much more computer to get decent performance out of 
Windows. OTOH, my fastest system is a PIII 700 with 384 MB RAM, so maybe 
I am just used to slow systems! <g>)

I first trying installing WinXP by choosing the second hard drive as the 
location and letting XP install, as it requested, a small number of 
files on the first hard disk. This request resulted in a boot folder 
about 7 MB in size containing NTDETECT.com, System Volume Information (a 
zero sized file), Boot.ini, and ntldr.exe. Unfortunately, XP required 
that this folder be in the first partition on the drive and so my RH 7.3 
installation had to be trashed when I needed to delete a partition to 
make room for XP. The rest of XP, including the Windows folder was 
installed onto the second drive. (This is a change from NT and Win98, 
where the Windows folder went onto the first drive while applications 
could be put onto the second drive, and I once ended up with a 1 GB 
partition for NT with this method). While this solution worked, the 
result was not what I wanted, so I decided to try a different approach.

After reinstalling RH 7.3 onto the first drive, writing the Grub boot 
loader into the MBR, for my second attempt, I disconnected the primary 
drive and set the secondary drive as primary. I then installed XP onto 
it. Once done, I reset the {Windows) drive as secondary and reconnected 
the (RH 7.3) primary drive. I then modified the file 
/boot/grub/grub.conf to add lines for Windows XP as follows

title Windows XP
    map (hd0) (hd1)
    map (hd1) (hd0)
    rootnoverify (hd1,0)
    chainloader +1
 
and, lo and behold! it worked.

BTW, there are several other ways of handling a dual-boot setup.

The traditional way for Windows users seems to be to install Windows on 
the first partition of the first hard disk and then use its boot loader 
to load a copy of the Linux boot sector copied onto the Windows drive 
(see http://linux.highsphere.net/howtos/dualboot.php for the gory details).

Another way is to install Windows on the first drive (or partition), 
Linux on the second drive (or partition), and then overwrite the MBR 
during installation of Linux and use Grub or LILO to choose the desired 
system. This seems to be the most common way for Linux users (see 
http://www.redhat.com/advice/tips/dualboot.html).

Still another way is to point the XP bootloader to Grub, which is 
installed in the boot sector of the Linux installation. See 
http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html. (Personally, 
this seems awfully complicated given that there are simpler ways).

Yet another way would have been to shuffle the existing Linux partitions 
around on the first hard drive to make enough room for a Windows 
partition at the beginning of the drive and then install XP as I did in 
my first attempt.

Unfortunately, all of the above assume that Windows is already installed 
and that Linux is to be installed, which was not my situation.
I am, from an experience some years ago in which SUSE 6.2 turned my 
Windows partition into a 2 GB swap file, reluctant to install Windows 
and Linux on the same drive. Thus my question, which, after some 
experimentation, I was able to answer.

Hopefully, my work might help someone else in a similar position, and so 
I have shared it in this message.

BOF