[Wylug-discuss] Mandrake and WinXP

[James Holden]

On Fri, 2005-01-07 at 01:30, Ben Pollinger wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I have obtained Mandrake 10, but have not installed any Linux before so
> am a little wary.
>
> I have a WinXP system, with 2 hard disks. Drive 1 has WinXP system,
> drive 2 has a few data partitions. My plan is to delete the first
> partition on the drive 2, but leave 2 others intact. Then I'll
> disconnect drive 1 install Mandrake, which should use the unused space
> at the start of my drive 2.

You get a few more options when installing Linux than you do on Windows.
Don't disconnect drive 1, it's where the bootloader will need to go.

> My worry is that Mandrake will do something to the MBR and knacker the
> other partitions on drive 2. Should this be OK?

This will work fine. Mandrake will install whereever you want it to.

Mandrake will load one of the Linux bootloaders (either LILO or Grub)
into the MBR. During the install, you will get the option to add your
Windows XP install to the boot menu.

> Also, can WinXP be configured to dual boot with its own loader? Most of
> what I've read suggests loading with LILO, then choosing Linux or WinXP,
> but I wondered if XP's boot.ini could do it too.

You can boot Linux with XP's boot loader, but it's not the best way to
do it. What will actually happen is that the Linux bootloader will
install itself in front of the XP one, so you'll still get it after
choosing XP from the Linux boot menu.

> Cheers,
> Ben

No problems.

Caveat emptor: Much of this advice comes from my recollections of the
days of NT4 by the way, but I don't seem much progress from Redmond
since then anyway so I reckon it's still OK.

James


> --
> Ben Pollinger
> www.pollinger.org.uk
> www.psyclick.org.uk
> PGP key: 0x30788FEF
>
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