[Wolves] Installing Windows after Linux

[mad-malc at tiscali.co.uk]

on Thu, 19 May 2005 10:18:40
Kevan wrote
>May be I have this wrong but I thought you should be able to install
>Windows (NT5 and later) and it will allow dual booting without messing
>the MBR?  Or is it too early in the morning...

I've always found Windows installs from 95 onwards to want to write over
the MBR, true the latest ones now don't write over the entire disk any more
thus giving you the chance to preserve any existing operating system, but
they do in my experience wipe out the MBR.
The solution depends on which Linux distro you are using as some have the
facility to boot from CD and perform a repair, the better one's also allow
you to pick and choose what to repair. This can enable just repairing the
bootloader GRUB or Lilo, with out the distro taking everything that you have
carefully tweaked and updated to your taste to be overwritten by the distro
base system.
So my advice would be to boot from your linux install cd first and see if
having identified your existing linux system it gives you the option to do
a system repair. If it does you could install Win 2K on a spare partition
and then try a repair to GRUB.
If your distro doesn't give a repair facility, it might be prudent to get
another hard drive to  install win 2k  having disconnected your linux drive,
then if you set the linux drive back as a master and the win 2k as slave
you just have to edit GRUB to boot win 2K as well.

Mad Malc




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