Windows 2000 to WindowsXP professional

redhat_newbie

Hi Lads,

Is there any chance for me to upgrade to WindowsXP professional ? Please tell me ! The situation is like this !

1) I have dual boot Windows2k and red hat 9
2) I don't want to loose the data
3) I don't have any backup

I just want to update windows 2k to windowsXP Professional , leaving hte rest of the system intact as it is working .

Any pointers ! or It can't be done :mad:.

Cheers,
ww)

Dun

If you install Windows XP, it will more than likely rewrite your MBR, so you can only boot Windows. What you do then is, if you have the Red Hat cd, boot off the CD and reinstall lilo/grub so that you have both options at the start up again.

Oh, and if you are just doing an upgrade or reinstall in the same Windows partition, it won't touch your linux partition(s).

redhat_newbie

Thanks for the reply

Yes I need to upgrade from win2k to winxp prof .

few more doubts

1) Do i have to just stick in winxp prof cd and run setup or do i have to boot it from the CD changing bios options.

2) Could you please tell me step by step procedure to get my grub menu back in action after upgrading to winxp.

thanks for the smashing help,
too many ideas coming in one night,

cheers,
ww)

Dun

Boot up Windows 2000 and then stick in your XP cd and run the setup from there (if it doesn't autorun).

The simplest thing to do would be to create a boot disk under RH, then do your upgrade, boot RH off the boot disk, and use the command below to reinstall Grub as your loader:

/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda

Presuming that you want it as your MBR on your primary hard drive.

redhat_newbie

I have 80 GB HDD divided into 4 partitions of 20 Gigs each.

first 20 GB --> NTFS (C:)

extended : 60 GB

In this first 20 GB --> red hat 9.0 ( swap : 1GB
boot : 100MB
/ : rest


rest
20 GB --> FAT32 (G:)
20 GB --> FAT32 (I:)

So after upgrading to windowsXP professional, I just have to boot into linux using linux boot up floppy and just type /sbin/grub-install /dev/hda
and later do I have to make any changes to grub.conf file (do i have to take the back of current grub.conf file)


Thanks very much dun_do_bheal

help is much appreciated
cheers,
ww)

Dun

Grub doesn't care what's on your Windows partition, so it doesn't need to be re-edited IF you're not changing the partitions; it just needs to be re-installed, so the
/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda
command should do the trick.

redhat_newbie

I just booted into win2k.
Zapped in Windows Professional CD
Clicked on setup, choose upgrade option , took 20 minutes.

Machine rebooted , Got the boot loader with 2 options as before (the only thing i have to do is boot into redhat and change the text from Win2k to WinPro in grub.conf)

Nothing happened to grub (boot loader)
It didn't over write my MBR at all.

Amazing !

Thanks dun_do_bheal

cheers all,ww)