Installing Windows XP after Linux

sAid

Hey,

I'm trying to install windows on my FC5 machine, but I'm a complete noob.

I've tried looking around the internet, but I don't understand alot of the tutorials/etc. I was just wondering if anyone has any experience in this and if they could walk me through it:D. Basically, I don't really know what the boot disks are or how to use them. If anyone could tell me an easier way of doing that would be great

Cheers

bren2002

I'm not sure it can be done. I think XP will attempt to overwrite the entire disk. Linux onto a Windows PC is OK, but Windows onto a Linux one.

philologos

it will be fine but you will have to install wingrub or edit the boot.cfg file on windows to put Linux as an option on the bootloader. (theres plenty about it on google), or if you can buy a copy of VMWare to run it under Linux.

Capt'n Midnight

Linux recognises Windows, rarely the other way around so install in the order
DOS / Win9x / WinNt/xp/2k / Linux

First you need free space or a Fat/NTFS partition to install to.

Next install XP

Now all you have to do is fix the boot
reinstalling most types of linux would sort out this
www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm is a dos utility that is handy if you have fat partitions - there is a guide somewhere to get it to copy/restore boot sectors and stuff and add in one to the winows boot.ini if you want to start windows first.

to make an XP boot disk
format a floppy in XP to sort out the boot sector.
xcopy c:\ntldr a: /h
xcopy c:\ntdetect.com a: /h
xcopy c:\boot.ini a: /h

you could then use your favorite utility ( cfdisk or dos fdisk) to set the active partition back to the linux one and boot XP off the floppy disk

if you already use grub then modify it's menu list to point to XP
gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/hda1
title		Windows NT/2000/XP (loader)
root		(hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader	+1

though you'd have to change root (hd0,0) to match the Drive / Partition that XP was on


other options would include loadlin by which you can load up a bootable CD image - doesn't apply to the OP but handy as another way of getting dual boot between *nix and M$

philologos

didn't know much about the process just knew it could be done so thanks Capt'n for the info