Dual boot Winxp and Kubuntu

[rbrown3rd]

I have a machine that is running both Winxp and Kubuntu Hardy. I have had to maintain Winxp out of necessity. Lately the Winxp installation has been getting very flaky, doing strange things like shutting down after login and other usual Winxp oddities. If necessary is there a way to reinstall Winxp on a dual machine without disturbing the Linux install that already exists?

[nowshining]

Re: Dual boot Winxp and Kubuntu

well first things, first, scan ur XP system for any viruses, malware, spyware, rootkits, etc..

have u done that?

Also do u have all updates installed?

[rbrown3rd]

Re: Dual boot Winxp and Kubuntu

Yes I have all updates installed. Updated as recently as yesterday. Have not scanned for malware in a few days. I will do it in safe mode since it will not stay logged in for long in normal mode. Ah the joys of Windows.

[RegLinUsr]

Re: Dual boot Winxp and Kubuntu

Reinstalling any version of M$ Windows will overwrite the MBR and do so without your permission. You will have to use a rescue cd (should be able to do this with the Kubuntu CD?) afterwards in order to rewrite GRUB to the MBR. Setup partition access as before. I've always saved a copy of my GRUB profile so that I could easily replace it when I did my Windows makeover. I've done this many times with SUSE with no problems but just getting started with Kubuntu so if anyone else knows a different way or have better info, please post it. I am always up for learning new and improved methods! Hope this helps.

Oh, and BTW... Windows breaks itself w/o any help from viruses, malware, spyware, rootkits, etc.. so even though they may be part of the poor performance issues, they are not required to make it so. Food for thought.

[Qqmike]

Re: Dual boot Winxp and Kubuntu

You can do as RegLinUsr suggests and use your Kubuntu Live CD to do the rescue work -- the GRUB repair.
You just need to reinstall GRUB (from your Kubuntu GRUB files to the MBR of the boot drive).
Here's how:

How To GRUB Methods - Toolkit
http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3081671.0
(it takes just a couple commands and a quit: root--setup--quit; see the how-to)

[Objekt]

Re: Dual boot Winxp and Kubuntu

What they said regarding GRUB.

Once you get a clean WinXP install, before you do anything else, consider doing this:

1) Get Partimage installed on your Linux install.
1a) This may require some searching. Partimage is not part of Kubuntu's "Add/Remove Programs" list, so it's not as easy as usual. However, you definitely can install it. I did it by using some "sudo apt-get" type commands in the Konsole. Unfortunately, I can't recall exactly what the command was.

2) After booting Kubuntu, use Partimage to save an image of your fresh Windows XP boot volume.
2a) Note that Partimage only works on UNmounted volumes. You may have to manually unmount your WinXP boot volume after you boot into Kubuntu. Also remember to invoke Partimage in Konsole using "sudo," as in "sudo partimage," otherwise it won't work.

3) Any time WinXP starts acting goofy, you can simply restore it from your image.
3a) Given enough hard drive space, you could even make an image of the WinXP boot volume on some interval, say every 3 months, and simply restore the last image when XP starts acting badly.

Using images will save you a lot of pain and wasted time should you need to reinstall Windows. FWIW, on my system, a fairly old one, it only takes a few minutes to save an image of my boot volume uncompressed. A barebones Windows XP install is around 4 GB.

[jessejazza]

Re: Dual boot Winxp and Kubuntu

The best way of dual-boot i have read about is using two HDs. I did this about a month ago and no problems. I wanted to do a clean install of both xp and ubuntu. I didn't want to partition a drive and then mess it up when i installed the new version of ubuntu. Using two hard drives keeps the two separate AND allows one to take out the large hard drive and put it in a caddy for data storage which is then conveniently accessible by both OS.

For default boot on ubuntu [using IDE drives]
a] Install drives [in my case 20mb for ubuntu and 10mb for xp - just for the system files] and switch both HDs to cable select and connect master cable to the xp drive.
b] Install XP
c] switch master cable to ubuntu drive and slave cable to xp drive.
d] install ubuntu - it cleverly senses the xp drive and sets up grub
e] have a beer!

That easy and very much better i think than setting up partitions. I always am grateful for HDs people give a way free. This is better in my view when it comes to installing new versions of ubuntu... i like to wipe everything and start again with all my data safely elsewhere. Similarly all you do to re-install xp is to swop cable to XP master - and carry on... then swop cables back.

I learnt this from the post below but you don't in fact need to edit menu.lst

You may like to read this if you have SATA drive or better kit than me!
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=179902