Dual installation solved

[mickel]

My desktop is getting old and I want to get a new one, probably a P-4 with a gig of ram and 250G hard drive.
I use Mint Cassandra 3.0 now and it's the only thing I have installed. I want to continue to use it 90% of the time , but there are a couple of things that I need Windows for and I would like to ask the experts, what is the simplest and best way to install Mint on the new machine while leaving Vista intact . I say simplest because I have not been able to dual install two Linux distros in the past and get the boot logger to offer me a choice at startup. Do I need to use partition magic or will Parted Magic 1.8 work when only Vista is on the new machine ? or do I need any outside partitioner at all.
As usual any help is appreciated.
Thanks

[linuxviolin]

Personally on a PC with Windows XP I used Partition Magic to recut the Windows partition. Then you install Mint in the empty space, without touching at the Windows partition. With Partition Magic you can also prepare your partitions. (/, /home, swap...)

For the partitioning you can see at http://www.linuxmint.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=358

But really you are sure to want to keep the Windows "thing"?

[OU812]

I have done dual-boots with win2000 and winxp. In both cases, I have installed linux on a second hard drive; however, I just bought a laptop with vista. Like you, it seems I need win occasionally. But this time I want to have vista and linux on the one drive (only 80 gigs, but plenty to house both os's and a few files). When I do finally install linux, I am going to use this guide:

http://apcmag.com/5046/how_to_dual_boot ... lled_first

john

[linuxviolin]

Respectfully he did say he'd prefer to have it available or that he needs it. That's fair enough I say!

Thank you I had understood well, my sentence was a joke…

[Husse]

What ever you do - never install windows after linux - the mbr is completely over written