[ale] Help! moving a Red Hat 8 drive to a pre-existing XP system

[Greg]

sorry for the delay - today is "install a new firewall" day.

I would do the following:

Using a windows 98 boot floppy run FDISK /MBR two or three times to clear
the mbr
Insert second disk and try installing RH to it.  Install grub to the first
sector of the linux partition
See if it works.  If not then

Using a windows 98 boot floppy run FDISK /MBR two or three times to clear
the mbr
Insert second disk and try installing RH to it.  Install grub to the MBR
See if it works.  If not then lets's use LILO

Using a windows 98 boot floppy run FDISK /MBR two or three times to clear
the mbr
Insert second disk and try installing RH to it.  Use LILO.  Install the
linux boot sector to the first sector of the linux partition

Create a linux boot disk (floppy)
Boot up using the floppy and lets us it to put a boot sector on it by
removing the floppy and putting a formatted floppy in and doing:
mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy

find the boot sector (more /etc/lilo.conf)

You will probably get something telling you boot=/dev/hdb1

so do a dd to get it onto the floppy

/bin/dd if=/dev/fdb1 of=/mnt/floppy/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

next unmount the floppy and reboot into windows

make the boot.ini not read-only and open it up

add C:\bootsect.lnx="My RED HAT OS"

save and make boot.ini read-only again

reboot and you should be able to boot into RH


my boot.ini looks like this for a single disk 3 OS system:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000
Professional" /fastdetect
C:\bootsec.lnx="Suse 9.0 Linux"
C:\="Microsoft Windows 98"
C:\CMDCONS\BOOTSECT.DAT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Recovery Console" /cmdcons

If you use a 2nd disk, you will need to change the part
"multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)" to
"multi(0)disk(1)rdisk(0)partition(1)" (I think partitions start with 1 and
not 0)  It's been awhile since I have messed with Windows booting.


Greg




> -----Original Message-----
> From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org]On Behalf Of John
> Wells
> Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2004 3:18 PM
> To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Cc: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
> Subject: RE: [ale] Help! moving a Red Hat 8 drive to a pre-existing XP
> system
>
>
> Greg said:
> > If you go into your BIOS on boot up does the pc recognize both drives ?
>
> Yup.
>
> > Before you introduce GRUB on the MBR have you gotten rid of the MS boot
> > loader first ???
>
> No...haven't made it that far :)
>
> > Can you just set up the MS boot loader to boot either Linux or
> XP ?? I do
> > this sometimes on dual boot dual disk boxes, but I use Windows
> Pro 2000 as
> > the Windows OS.  I don't have any experience with XP, but it's worth a
> > shot.
>
> I tried dd'ing the first 512 bytes of /dev/hdb1 and then following the
> directions to copy it over to windows and add it to c:\boot.ini, but after
> rebooting and selecting the linux option I created, all I get it a black
> screen with a blinking white cursor.  If I could get this working, I could
> give up on this whole effort :).
>
> Btw, I can remove both drives, install the linux drive, and everything
> works fine.
>
> > I don't guess LILO would be any better ??
>
> Don't know...I imagine if grub is having a problem lilo will as well, but
> not sure.
>
> Thanks,
> John
>
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