A Beginner's Guide to Dual Booting Linux Mint and Windows XP

[shane]

Hello everyone!

This is my first post here. I have been following Linux Mint since Bianca came onto the scene. And I am really impressed with the work you have all done. A job very well done! I think Linux Mint takes bringing Linux to the non-tech savvy user a step further. And to show my support for Linux Mint I have written a guide of sorts for Dual Booting with Windows XP on my blog. Suggestions and corrections are most welcome. Please visit my blog and give your thoughts as to how I can improve it. Here is the link:

http://drsjlazar.blogspot.com/2007/02/b ... linux.html

Regards,

Shane.

[clem]

Great guide Shane. With your permission I would like to copy a part of this guide to include in the user manual that will come with the Shipped CD of Bianca.

Clem

[shane]

hello clem!

I am honored that you think my guide is great! and even more so that you would want to use it in the Bianca manual! Please go ahead take whatever you need from it, modify, edit, add, subtract... Let's take Mint to the masses!

shane.

[frank392]

Hi Shane,
Thank you, great guide!
I'm starting to print it out, to give away with a copy of linuxMint to all my friends.
thanks
Frank

[jandy]

Thanks, Shane. Your guide helped me to install Mint to my notebook yesterday, and it took a lot of the anxiety out of the process.

One step, though, that could be clarified--during the "Mount Partitions" step (step 5). By default, I think, Gparted assigns the first partition "/media/hda1"--this is the boot partition where Windows XP and the NTFS file system are stored (at least on my notebook). When I tried to install this partition mounted at /media/hda1, I received an error message telling me to either back up to the beginning of the installation process or I would lose my data.

I did a quick Google search and found someone on a Ubuntu forum who recommended that this first partition be mounted at "/windows". I re-tried the installation mounting the NTFS/Windows XP partition at "/windows" and the installation went flawlessly. The GRUB works great, and I can now dual boot between Mint and Windows XP Pro.

Thanks again for the help--I'm not very techy (so I really don't know how the above advice worked) and don't know what the heck I am doing, but I'm having fun thus far.

[shane]

hi jandy!

I am glad that I've helped at least one person. You are welcome and thanks for the heads up.

as for your observation, i really dont know what caused that problem... and how changing the mount point solved it... was the NTFS partition marked for reformatting? It is the only reason i can think of right now for that message. I will add a note in my blog.

Anyway, i'm glad it worked out fine for you and i hope you continue to rediscover computing, with Linux.

cheers, take care.

shane.

[shane]

hi all!

I have been pretty busy lately and havent had time to work on my follow up guide... I need a little help on 2 areas especially... this is because i dont have Windows on my computer and i dont have an Nvidia or ATI graphics card. my questions are:

1) How is the mounting of windows partitions during the installation? are the partitions already mounted and ready for read access? read and write access in the case of FAT32 partitions? or does the user have to run mint Disk after installation?...

2)How do I startup the envy GUI? on my comp when i execute 'envy' in Terminal i get the text based interface... which doesnt let me go beyond the first option since i dont have the required graphics cards. i would really like to do a step by step guide as I am aiming for those who would find installing it in Windows complicated... yes they do exist
So, basically what I am am looking for is a description of the steps involved in using envy to install the drivers and if somebody out there is kind enough, some screenshots to add to the guide. PM me for my email address where you can send the screenshots.

And if you're really kind you can write out these parts for me from 1st hand experience... credit will be given wherever it is due

thanks in advance.

[shane]

thank you alberto for you quick response. you are right, it is version 0.8.1... clem, are we going to see the 0.9 version in Mint anytime soon?

about the first question I asked about write permissions on FAT partitions... in mintDisk I saw that it mounts with the 'umask=000' option. I guess that gives read and write access... I'm still unclear about the rest...

[clem]

Hi,

I wasn't aware there was a new version of envy. I'm adding 0.9.1 in Romeo as we speak.

Clem

[xunil]

I'm presently dual booting.
(Will not leave Windows, but will start using Mint a bit more.)
Anyhow : since I really don't want Mint to affect my Windows partition in any way, how do I prevent automounting of partitions (...maybe that could be part of the guide) ? Thanks in advance!

xunil

[shane]

hi xunil

for u to stop Mint automounting your windows partitions you will have to edit the /etc/fstab file. run this command in terminal to open the file as administrator:

Code: Select all

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Here is what my fstab file looks like so you have a general idea of what we are talking about. I do not have any Windows partitions but I'm sure u can figure it out.

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/hda3
#UUID=d8bce73d-368e-437c-ad5d-240366c01f38 / reiserfs notail 0 1
# /dev/hda2
UUID=70a33f41-b304-4b69-b77d-fa3f539ccef1 /media/hda2 reiserfs defaults 0 2
# /dev/hda1
UUID=11fd0eea-4ee4-4758-8197-b2c9385c7f0a none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

to disable automounting of Windows partitions, add a '#' at the beginning (before UUID) of all the lines which contain NTFS or VFAT (the Windows file systems). As an example I have added the bold # for my /dev/hda3 partition.

Save the file, close gedit and reboot. This should do what you want.

[clem]

That's exactly it. This way they won't be mounted by fstab (because they're commented out) and they won't be mounted by mintDisk (because they're defined, although commented out, in fstab).

Clem