Author Topic: making dual boot.  (Read 550 times)

Unforgiven1

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making dual boot.
« on: 12 August 2003, 21:26 »
I changed my mind and now want a dual boot system because I just couldn't live without gaming.  So I reinstalled winsuck. (restore to factory settings disk)  Now I went to install Redhat and used the disk druid to remove a peice of the winders partition to put Linux on.. Lo and behold..I couldn't edit the partition size.  So could someone please tell me how to repartition my hard drive, leaving windows on around 15 gigs of my hard drive and giving the rest to Linux. (or free space I can put linux on.)
Microsoft is not the answer.
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"No" is the answer!
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Faust

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making dual boot.
« Reply #1 on: 12 August 2003, 11:32 »
Easiest way is just to partition the drive into boot, fat32, root, swap with linux, then reinstall windows then reinstall linux.  This is why partitioning is meant to be well thought out I guess - it's a bitch to change afterwards without messing stuff up.
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Unforgiven1

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making dual boot.
« Reply #2 on: 12 August 2003, 12:18 »
problem is...I can't do that.  I don't actually have the windoze disk.  All I have is the recovery disks that restore this wonderous hunk of shit to factory installation.  My HP laptop is my favorite gaming machine (for travel)...so I want dual boot for it, because it also goes to school with me...and I like Linux's office program more already.
My 2 of my other computers are running redhat single boot except for my big desktop which is just XP.  But the guy that built that installed XP and didn't provide me with the disks
Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
"No" is the answer!
The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first.

Copperhead

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making dual boot.
« Reply #3 on: 12 August 2003, 13:01 »
1) What version of Windows? (NT/XP, 9x)

2) What type of "filesystem"? (NTFS, FAT)

I believe that if you want to "free up" HD space, then you are going to have to find a copy of Partition Magic.  Qtparted will also work (http://qtparted.sourceforge.net) if you are running Linux.  Both of these programs are capable of resizing NTFS partitions.

What you need is a partitioning scheme.  If you care to provide us with a diagram,and some general properties of your hard drive, and your current partitioning scheme, we could probably help you out more.

Unforgiven1

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making dual boot.
« Reply #4 on: 12 August 2003, 19:23 »
1. OS winders XP Home
2. filesystem: 38000mb NTFS. 24mb in FAT
3. it's a 40 gig standard hard drive in an HP laptop.
4.The way it's currently partitioned is...it's all in the NTFS partition.  What I want to do is remove around 20 Gigabytes from there and make free space so that I can install redhat Linux onto it.
Microsoft is not the answer.
Microsoft is the question.
"No" is the answer!
The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first.

Copperhead

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making dual boot.
« Reply #5 on: 13 August 2003, 01:06 »
You are most likely going to need Partition Magic. I believe that PM is capable of resizing NTFS partitions.  The XP Disk Manager utility will not allow you to resize NTFS partitions, so, like everything else M$, you are going to have to use a third party utility. You can check here: http://www.powerquest.com and see if they have a demo version.

Your other alternative, and I haven't tried this yet, but I have heard about it, is to grab a copy of Knoppix Linux (it is a live version that runs off of CD...great uility for recovery and these sorts of things), and run it in expert mode, making use of the qtparted utility.  I have heard that they have included qtparted on their latest release, but, like I said, I have never used it before.

Either way, after you resize your NT drive to 20 GByou make your partitioning scheme look like this:

|--------NTFS------------|-------ext3(linux /)------|--swap--|

/dev/hda1 = NTFS (20GB)
/dev/hda2 = ext3 linux / (19.5GB)
/dev/hda5 = linux swap (256MB or 2x the amount of RAM)

If you are on a newer PC, you probably don't need to make a /boot partition, since your bios will be relatively new, and you can boot from any cyllinder. /boot is mainly for older systems whose BIOS does not support booting above cyllinder 1024.  Then you just install Lilo into the / of the linux partition (/dev/hda2 in this case) when the installation menu asks you.

You should also try to convert your NTFS drive to FAT32. In Linux, there is no write support (yet) for NTFS, only read support. You will be able to mount your windows drive, and look at your files, but you not be able to modify them in any way. I believe that you can convert the drive in Partition Magic.

Hope that helps...

Faust

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making dual boot.
« Reply #6 on: 13 August 2003, 06:13 »
quote:

All I have is the recovery disks that restore this wonderous hunk of shit to factory installation


I really dont see how they can do this legally...  Well alright I do, but they shouldn't.  I mean do you own it or don't you?  If you own it then you should have the install CD's.  End of fucking story.  God I hate business people and their evil ways.   :(
Yesterday it worked
Today it is not working
Windows is like that
 -- http://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/error-haiku.html

st1d

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making dual boot.
« Reply #7 on: 13 August 2003, 21:26 »
Call your manufacturer and ask them how to partition your disk.  If it's dell or another half-ass linux supporter ("we support linux except when someone wants us to"), lay the pressure on.  There's no good reason why your system has to be just one OS.  They only support one OS, granted, but that doesn't forbid you from having other's installed.

Other than that, it might be good to install windows, learn to use fdisk, then do what you have to do to install both partitions.