Dualbooting worries/issues

civint · Post by **civint** » Sat Apr 28, 2007 1:14 pm

Ok. I'm doing a bit of an upgrade, a bigger hard drive (120GB), a new graphics card (256MB), and I'm also installing a version of XP, so I can indulge in a bit of gaming now and then, since wine is too temperemental, and cedega isn't free (well, technically neither is xp, but you know....), and both aren't completely compatible with windows games.

Anyhoo, I am currently have 2 harddrives, one 20GB the other 30GB. I intend to use the 30GB to install xp on, and the 120 for linux and personal files (although I may use bits of the 120GB for windows things, depending on the size of the install of xp...should fit onto the 30GB....).

Currently, however, I am running a temporary install of mint, accross my 20GB and 30GB HDDs, but I want to try to install xp onto the 30GB hard drive, in order to test it's installed size. However, I cannot seem to be able to install it to hdb (what was hdb under mint anyways ) I have reformatted it as NTFS, from ext3, but to no avail, and I cannot seem to access it from cfdisk, as it says that ity cannot be accessed...

ANy help, or would I be better off just installing it to a partition of the new HDD?

Also, on my motherboard, I have an "AGPx slot, does this mean that any AGP video card will work (with correct adapters, if needed)?

telic · Post by **telic** » Sun Apr 29, 2007 5:33 am

I installed Windows XP as though it were the one and only operating system on the master drive. Then I configured (jumpered) that drive as the slave, and added another drive as the master which boots Linux. XP doesn't seem to care.

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Boo · Post by **Boo** » Sun Apr 29, 2007 7:50 am

I have done a similar thing as both of you.

I had fedora on my master.
got a new drive, made it master, installed xp on half and ubuntu on the other half.
then i made fedora the master and xp/ubuntu the slave.
modified the fedora grub.conf to boot all 3.
then i changed ubuntu for mint. (no drive swapping required).
and modified fedora grub again, and any other time the kernel changes.

civint · Post by **civint** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 7:05 am

the issue install, when it hat I have, is that the xp install gets to the bit where you assign the c: drive, and it doesn't recognise the drive partition I am trying to install it to, even when, under the gnome partition/disk manager has just reformatted the disk as NTFS.

Boo · Post by **Boo** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:13 am

I would not format the partition you want to put xp on.
leave it unassigned so when xp goes to install it will ask where to put it self and format the partition itself.

on the AGPx, the bios may have some info on the agp speed.
for agp you can not put a 2x apg card in an 8x agp slot.
I think you can only go to half the max agp slot speed.
ie 8x slot can take a 4x card but not slower(2x).
4x slot can take a 2x card but not a 1x.
some AGP cards can slow them selves to half, so a 4x card can be 2x with a jumper change.

telic · Post by **telic** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 4:01 pm

the xp install gets to the bit where you assign the c: drive, and it doesn't recognise the drive partition I am trying to install it to

Whenever I install MS Windows, I use Ultimate Boot CD utilities (e.g. Maxtor MaxBlast) to prepare the HD.

(You can also put Puppy Linux on the UBCD, making it a versatile "Swiss Knife" tool.)

Husse · Post by **Husse** » Tue May 01, 2007 1:37 pm

@Boo
You are basically right, but the AGP issue is a bit more complicated, but I don't remember any more. Used to do a lot of upgrading for old boxes and the number of problems we got into was almost countless.....
And a lot of times it did not work when it should have and the other way round sometimes