Please help .. new linux user trying to install

[jhp612]

HI,
I am new to linux and wanted to install mandrake 8.1 . I currently have windows XP installed on my hdda and want to install linux on hddd . i am planning on using LILO as the boot loader. I also plan on having my computer boot off hddd so that the boot loader can run from there. is there anything i need to do in particular to make this work ? I tried this once and when i booted off hddd when the computer booted all it said was GRUB and hanged. what can i do to fix this? thanks

 

[her209]

i beileve you need to install it on a fat32 partition on the hdd.

 

[Jabroni]

http://windows.about.com/cs/dualboot/


Try this. Basically you need to install XP first and use the NT boot manager, not LILO. otherwise you will just screw up your NT/2k/XP install.

I would just buy a cheap computer and put linux on it, OR take the plunge and go Linux all the way. Dual boots are hard to use and usually you end up using one or the other.

I use Debian on my other machine, and after you get some basics it is easy to use. Especially if you use a GNOME desktop on the x windowing system. You may want to use RedHat if you are just starting because of the wide user support and RPM software library (although apt is pretty good...).

Good luck and have fun.

 

[FUBAR]

I find it extremely improbable that the XP boot loader will load linux for you.

On my 2k dual boot, grub is installed in the MBR of the first (physical) drive w/ linux on drive 2. My startup goes grub w/ linux and dos as choices, then to the win2k boot menu with 98 and 2k. Oops, that actually makes it a tri-boot... my bad. LILO should work about the same. Buyer beware tho, I did have problems trying to put all 3 OS's on the same drive, bootloader got hosed and had to fdisk /mbr from a boot disk. no problems with 2 HD's, YMMV.

 

[pcmark]

I went about it a bit differently. I added Mandrake to my Win2k box and put the bootloader on a floppy. There is no chance of screwing up your Windows install that way. Since linux boots pretty slowly anyway, with all the boot-time processes and such, the extra time to boot from the floppy isn;t too bad. take the floopy out and reboot if you want Windows.

 

[thornc]

<< I find it extremely improbable that the XP boot loader will load linux for you. >>



Since the NT loader in both NT and win2k loads linux pretty well, and since XP is based
on these two I think is pretty safe to say that the XP boot loader will load Linux!! Work
needs to be done but it does work...

LinuxDoc.org .... NT bootloader + linux howto (or something similar, to sleappy to check now!!)

 

[EmperorRob]

I got to give credit to AndyHui on this one. He referred me to this Win2k/Linux dual-boot FAQ and it's worked great for me. Only catch is NOT to install LILO on the MBR.

 

[ivwshane]

That's what I did and now I happily use windows boot loader to control whether or not I boot into red hat or win2k. Though it was probably just as easy as using lilo and editing that.