Advise to reinstall XP with Linux

[James McDonald]

Collins Richey wrote:

>On Mon, 01 Nov 2004 11:27:55 -0500, Jean Sagi <jeansagi at uniweb.net.co> wrote:
>  
>
>>Hi all,
>>
>>This might be not very common, but I finaly manged to crash my WindowsME
>>on the first disk I have (/dev/hda), by resizing the partition where it
>>reside with Diskdrake.
>>
>>Luckyly, all my linux partions where on my second disk (dev/hdb), and I
>>can boot'em without any problem, so as you may guess the lost was not much.
>>
>>So, now, I want to install XP in my first disk (yes... I like to play
>>with the devil), but leaving my linuxes on second disk _intact_ and I'm
>>not very sure on how to proceed and maybe someone here want to share
>>some ideas on how to acomplish this.
>>
>>I think that:
>>
>>    
>>
>
>I'm assuming from the above:
>
>1. Your first disk is toast, ready to reinstall
>2. You can boot the linux on the second disk with CD or floppy
>
>Here's what to do:
>
>1. Boot linux and partition the first disk the way you want it. I
>wouuld recommend enough space for WinXP as ntfs (primary, bootable), a
>small partition as vfat (primary) to allow transfer of files between
>linux and WinXP, and the rest (or none) as an extended partition to
>subdivide however you like. BTW, the WinXP install may format your
>small vfat partition as ntfs, so you'll need to reformat it as vfat
>after the fact.
>  
>
If installing of a CD you will prompted for the Partition Format. Just 
make sure when you install XP you chose the "Format this partition as 
FAT32" not NTFS you can use NTFS but you will need to recompile your 
kernel to support NTFS and the new NTFS write code under 2.6.x seems to 
be an update only sort of code not full write support

>2. Install WinXP to the first partition. on the first disk WinXP will
>not see your linux partitions. After install, only WinXP will be
>bootable from disk. If this step fails, you're sol from my standpoint.
>I've never actually installed WinXP.
>
>3. Boot linux and reinstall lilo or grub with the proper stanzas to
>boot WinXCP and linux. If you need help with this step, ask again.
>  
>
You can use the XP ntldr to boot linux simply run

dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/floppy/bootsec.bin bs=512 count=1

to save the bootsector to floppy

Note: Before you run dd update lilo conf and remove the winMe stuff and 
rerun lilo -v
once XP is installed you simply

copy a:\bootsec.bin C:\

edit boot.ini

to include

Linux=c:\bootsec.bin

as an operating system choice

>4. All done.
>
>Good luck,
>
>  
>
I ended up forking out $440 for VMWare and putting my WIndows XP 
installation into a VM. It's handy to have a windows install available 
inside linux...