[luau] Dual Booting with WinXP Pro

W. Wayne Liauh LiauhW001 at Hawaii.rr.com
Thu Nov 7 19:04:00 PST 2002


Thanks.  I think you just answered the first part of my question, in 
that I should be able to install WinXP Pro in any of the three primary 
partitions.  If this is not correct, please let me know.

(It should be noted that although textbooks say that there are "four" 
primary partitions, since the fourth one will be used to create extended 
partitions, there are only three primary partitions in which to install 
a bootable partition.  Also, since Win98 does not use MBR, I am pretty 
sure that you must install Win98 in the first primary partition, unless 
you install a multiple booting tool first, such as Norton something.)

The second part of my question, which I did not ask, is that, if I 
install WinXP "after" Linux, do I need to do anything? With Win98, if 
installed after Linux, it will wipe out the content of MBR.  When that 
happened, you need to use a bootable floppy or CD, chroot, then reload LILO.

Thus, I am rephrasing my question: can I reserve a space for WinXP 
(which will be below the 1012nd cylinder, or roughly 8GB), then install 
it after everything is done?


Eric Hattemer wrote:

>I am thoroughly confused at this email.  First, when you say "dual
>booting", are you refering to two versions of Windows?  If not, then
>there is almost no order required.  You get 4 primary partitions on your
>system (make sure you partition with win > NT or linux).  The first
>sector of your disk is the MBR, and points to the first sector of the
>partition which will be booted.  This can be any of the 4 primary
>partitions.  There are rules like that the start of that partition
>cannot be over 8GB, and that it can't be an extended partition, but I
>believe both of those rules can be cicumvented in most modern
>situations.  
>
>When you install lilo to the MBR, it is the first thing that comes up
>when your system is booted.  It then selects which of those partitions
>will be booted.  For linux it automatically starts reading the kernel
>and etc.  For windows, it does a thing called chain loading, where it
>starts the windows partition boot sector, and then windows starts
>loading its own kernel.  Sometimes people in linux create a boot
>partition, which holds the kernel and whatnot.  This is especially
>useful for software raid or odd root filesystems that can't easily be
>booted from lilo.  You might want to put that at the beginning of the
>disk, but it really shouldn't matter.  It should be below 8GB, but other
>than that, it can go wherever.  Generally the windows partition should
>start under the 8GB mark.  But like I said earlier, I'm almost sure that
>doesn't matter even in win98.
>
>Now if you're depending on the windows bootloader in boot.ini, then
>that's probably a different story.  However, its a story that I know
>little about.  As long as you have linux on the system, you should
>probably use lilo or grub.  If not, you still might consider it or
>another 3rd party boot loader.  If you are using windows boot loader,
>then I believe the NT-style OS should be first, but I could be wrong.  
>
>-Eric Hattemer
>
>On Thu, 2002-11-07 at 12:34, W. Wayne Liauh wrote:
>  
>
>>When dual-booting with Win98, of course, Windows must be in the first 
>>partition.  However, I remember this (i.e., the Windows be in the first 
>>partition) is not necessary with Win2000.
>>
>>Does anyone know whether I can put WinXP Pro in a non-first partition?
>>
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