w2k/u7.10 dual-boot

Sat Feb 9 18:04:55 UTC 2008

Lennart Sorensen writes: 

> On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 04:10:03PM -0500, chris-n/jUll39koHNgV/OU4+dkA at public.gmane.org wrote:
>> This is uncharted territory so I don't know if you'll want to hazard a 
>> guess. What do you think the chances are that this problem would be 
>> rectified by doing the W2K/u7.10 dual-boot installation again, this time 
>> with W2K on ntfs?  
>> 
>> I just don't want to waste a couple of hours if there's no hope.  
>> 
>> I seem to recall there was some scenario in which the bootloader should be 
>> installed on the "first sector of the boot partition" instead of the MBR. 
>> Maybe that's for a dual-boot of W98 and NT or somesuch (and nothing to do 
>> with linux). Does that ring a bell? 
> 
> I used to do that back when I used to reinstall windows every 3 months
> (generally a good idea with win9x), and windows would overwrite the MBR
> every time, so having the boot loader on the first primary linux
> partition meant I could get the system booting normally again simply by
> changing the active partition in fdisk from dos to be the linux
> partition instead of the C: partition.  The MBR stayed as the generic
> 'boot the partition with the bootable flag'. 
> 
> Since I no longer reinstall windows (or install in the first place) on
> my machines, I just install GRUB in the mbr and don't have any
> partitions flagged bootable.  Windows does seem to insist on having a
> bootable partition so marking C: bootable might be a good idea.

Okay, I was able to install a u7.10/W2K dual-boot on another computer, So, 
now I know it can be done. Hard drive failure seems unlikely as I am able to 
install either OS on the drive, just not both at the same time. I'm 
wondering if it's the hard drive *model* that's a problem. I had the same 
problem on two identical hard drives - they are WD 160 GB drives. The other 
thing is that maybe my motherboard/BIOS doesn't like this dual-boot 
scenario. 

Would it be worth trying taking the hard drive, installing the dual-boot on 
the computer an which the dual-boot installation works, then remove the hard 
drive and re-install the hard drive (not the OS) on the computer I want it 
on? Obviously some drivers and things will change as the hard drive will now 
have a new computer home. Is that even worth trying? 

In the meantime I'll ask the tech at Krazy Krazy (where I bought the hard 
drives) if there is anything about these hard drives that he can think of 
that would cause a problem dual-booting. 

I have had other dual-boot (linux/Windows) installations on the computer I 
want this on, so I know the motherboard/BIOS doesn't reject dual-boots as a 
rule - but this one scenario or this one hard drive model is a problem... 

Chris 

> 
> Do NOT resize the windows partition while installing linux.  I wouldn't
> trust it to get that right. 
> 
> --
> Len Sorensen
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