dual boot os's

Spoon 11th · 02-21-08, 10:00 AM

Linux boot disk from CD are slow to boot up. Dual boot is very simple to do. Defrag your windows and disable swap disk (also called page file or virtual memory). Then install linux and manually allocate disk space. Split up the windows partition to make three partitions( this will shrink the windows partition size if the full HD is alloceted to windows currently): 1 for windows, 1 for linux and 1 for linux swap. After installing linux boot up windows at some point and re-enable windows swap disk.

My smaller hard drive has 1 partition for windows: 9,5 GB, 1 linux swap partition: 1 GB and linux OS (ubuntu) partition: 9 GB and the boot loader (Grub) has windows as the first choice to boot up.

SUBMAN1 · 02-21-08, 10:47 AM

Don't worry about it. If you screw up Grub bad, you can always boot up your Windows XP CD and recover your Windows XP Master Boot Record by getting to a command prompt and typing 'fdisk /mbr'. The mbr part tells XP to re-write the Master Boot Record and you are good to go just like you never installed Linux in the first place.

So its not like you are dead in the water if you screw something up. Just don't erase your Windows partition while partitioning your Linux drives.

TO be on the safe side, just back up your critical files. You will find out that all your tax information and all your banking and all your save game files from various games will all fit onto a single CD-ROM (Or at worst, a single DVD5). So if you did screw up and accidently paritioned your WIndows Partition, or screwed up with the mke2fs (assuming you are going to be using EXT2 and EXT3 based paritions) or the mkswap command, you can reload Windows and have all your stuff just like it was.

XP has another program that can also write an MBR - diskpart. diskpart is a bigger pain to use, but its an alternative.

Let me know if you need help.

-S

02-21-08, 10:47 AM	#2
SUBMAN1 Rear Admiral Join Date: Apr 2005 Posts: 11,866 Downloads: 0 Uploads: 0	Don't worry about it. If you screw up Grub bad, you can always boot up your Windows XP CD and recover your Windows XP Master Boot Record by getting to a command prompt and typing 'fdisk /mbr'. The mbr part tells XP to re-write the Master Boot Record and you are good to go just like you never installed Linux in the first place. So its not like you are dead in the water if you screw something up. Just don't erase your Windows partition while partitioning your Linux drives. TO be on the safe side, just back up your critical files. You will find out that all your tax information and all your banking and all your save game files from various games will all fit onto a single CD-ROM (Or at worst, a single DVD5). So if you did screw up and accidently paritioned your WIndows Partition, or screwed up with the mke2fs (assuming you are going to be using EXT2 and EXT3 based paritions) or the mkswap command, you can reload Windows and have all your stuff just like it was. XP has another program that can also write an MBR - diskpart. diskpart is a bigger pain to use, but its an alternative. Let me know if you need help. -S __________________

02-21-08, 10:00 AM	#1
Spoon 11th Seasoned Skipper Join Date: Mar 2001 Location: Finland Posts: 689 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	Linux boot disk from CD are slow to boot up. Dual boot is very simple to do. Defrag your windows and disable swap disk (also called page file or virtual memory). Then install linux and manually allocate disk space. Split up the windows partition to make three partitions( this will shrink the windows partition size if the full HD is alloceted to windows currently): 1 for windows, 1 for linux and 1 for linux swap. After installing linux boot up windows at some point and re-enable windows swap disk. My smaller hard drive has 1 partition for windows: 9,5 GB, 1 linux swap partition: 1 GB and linux OS (ubuntu) partition: 9 GB and the boot loader (Grub) has windows as the first choice to boot up.