Basically, I'm scared of dual boot

[Chameleon]

I'm really, really paranoid about potentially nuking my box (I've spent a lot of time and effort both hardening and stripping XP down. I've got it running only 25 processes on startup, and have room to whittle it down some more). I was reading the tutorial here, and stopped everything when I read the part on page 3 about not being able to boot either OS until I ran SystemRestoreCD. The problem for me is that SystemRestoreCD only seems to work for me until I'm booted up and have to do something. Then, it chokes. I suspect this is because they don't have an AMD64 distro, but who knows.

Is there a way to do this that doesn't hinge on coming close to losing my XP data and settngs? If not, I guess I'll wipe an old box (I have a couple laying around), buy a cheap router, and make room. Thanks in advance.

[jankushka]

Re: Basically, I'm scared of dual boot



unless you install your linux into the windows partition,
there's no reason why your windows should get screwed.

placing grub in the mbr is by far the easiest and safest choice.
grub will recognize you have a windoze on your box and set itself up so that you have the
necessary boot options in the boot menu. of course it will get screwed the day you install
windoze vista, but that's a windoze issue, not linux's or grub's.

windoze supports ext3 (see "supported operating systems" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3)
and if you're to share files between windoze and linux, ext3 is likely the best choice. why use
an old file system like fat32, anyway?

if you really are to work in two environments, you may just as well consider installing a virtual
machine (virtualbox, vmware) in windoze and install your linux in there.

hth
cheers

[Chameleon]

Re: Basically, I'm scared of dual boot

unless you install your linux into the windows partition,
there's no reason why your windows should get screwed.

placing grub in the mbr is by far the easiest and safest choice.
grub will recognize you have a windoze on your box and set itself up so that you have the
necessary boot options in the boot menu. of course it will get screwed the day you install
windoze vista, but that's a windoze issue, not linux's or grub's.

windoze supports ext3 (see "supported operating systems" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext3)
and if you're to share files between windoze and linux, ext3 is likely the best choice. why use
an old file system like fat32, anyway?

if you really are to work in two environments, you may just as well consider installing a virtual
machine (virtualbox, vmware) in windoze and install your linux in there.

hth
cheers

In case I forgot to make it clearer, I'm a total newbie with anything non-Windows. I just now noticed that this board doens't underline links (Not to mentiont that I forgot to proofread to insure that my link was even clickable). Here's the full URL:

http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/...ot-laptop.html

Granted, I didn't use SystemRescueCD (As previously stated, it didn't seem to want to work for me). I had to use PartitionMagic instead. I actually got as far as making the partitions, and booting with the Kubuntu CD before I read the part of linuxdevcenter's tutorial about temporarily being unable to boot either OS. If you or somebody else knows of a better tutorial, I'm all ears.

Also: I don't ever intend to install Vista on this box. I installed it on another computer I have just to kind of fool around, and am not impressed (Sharing folders and printer set-ups require satanic rituals in order to work, for example). Between that and the increasingly evil EULA, I've found my way here.

[lingenfr]

Re: Basically, I'm scared of dual boot

There is NO need to use a system restore CD to install Linux. Period. If you need to shrink your windows partition to make room, back it up first. Or just forget it and play with the live CD. Then you can be really safe.

[Earthwings]

Re: Basically, I'm scared of dual boot

Make a backup. It's really that simple, and you need it anyway to prevent data loss which does happen from time to time due to buggy software, broken hardware and stupid mistakes.

[jankushka]

Re: Basically, I'm scared of dual boot

sorry, i don't know of any good howtos.
basically, though, if you've already shrunk your windoze, there's not much you have to know.
after having backed up your critical data on windoze, follow this (i'll assume you only have 1 hd drive):
a) download and burn the desktop cd of feisty fawn for your platform
b) boot your box off the cd
c) click the install icon on the desktop
d) answer the questions
e) when you get to the disk partitioning bit, pick the manual configuration (you'll see your windoze partition there)
f) add a logical partition for swap and make it (rule of thumb) RAM_SIZE*2 bytes big
g) use the remaining space for another logical partition for the root file system, which is identified by /, and have it create an ext3 file system on it
h) beware of the format checkbox: make sure IT IS NOT checked on your windoze partition
i) apply the changes and continue with the installation procedure till it says your system is ready and you can reboot

that's it.
reboot.
you'll be prompt to hit ESC to get to grub's boot menu.
you will see a windoze, a kubuntu, a kubuntu recovery and a memtest boot entry.
try both windoze and kubuntu entries to make sure all is right.
it will be.

ps:
the default settings keep grub very quiet: no menu by default, no messages, ...
i normally change things so that:
a) the boot menu always comes up by itself
b) it gives me 10s before autobooting the default boot entry
c) boot messages are printed as services are started during boot
d) console graphic mode is vga=791
but these are (optional) things you can set later

cheers

[Loanrangie]

Re: Basically, I'm scared of dual boot

I have used partiton magic and seagate seatools to restore my dual boot pc back to xp only after deciding to build another linux dedicated pc. Partition magic to delete the linux ext and swap partitions and resize the NTFS partition and the seatools boot disc to fix the MBR. I used this on both my laptop and desktop pc and both are back to how they were.