Dual boot

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Tue, Jan 03, 2006 at 10:59:55AM -0500, Joseph wrote:
> I am getting ready to install Linux for the first time.
> However I am planning to install it on a second hard drive 
> on a PC that already has windows on the first hard drive.
> I would like to bootup my PC and get the windows menu to 
> choose which OS I would like to boot.

Better to let grub give you a choice of windows or linux.  The windows
boot loader is meant to boot windows only and anytyhing else is a hack
using it's dos booting hacks.  Most distributions will even detect
windows and add it to the boot loader menu for you.

> I already know how to multiboot windows with different 
> versions of windows. 

Sure windows knows how to boot windows.  It doesn't consider the concept
that anything else exists.

> If this can be done what should be the command line for the 
> boot.ini file so that I can boot Linux on drive 2?
> If this can be done how should I proceed?
> Right now I can't buy a second PC or remove windows while I 
> am trying to figure out Linux.

You can install the linux boot loader and dd the boot sector to a file
and then put that into the boot.ini, but it is a disgusting hack and
likely to break at some point.  Use a bootloader that knows how to boot
multiple OSs and it will be much simpler.  In all the years of using
linux, I have never accepted doing it that way and I never will.  I use
grub (lilo in the past) as the primary boot loader because they know how
to boot everything cleanly.  Once they pass control to the C: boot
sector, the windows boot loader can choose which windows to boot since
that is what it knows how to do.  No hacks involved.

Len Sorensen
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