I'm sure you see these kinds of posts a lot, and I read some of them, but I wasn't able to really find the info I needed, and that's why I'm making this post. I want to dual boot XP and red hat 7.2 on my system. I have 2 hard drives and was thinking of partitioning the second with partition magic and using half of it for red hat. I have tried dual booting in the past with windows ME, but something happened not allowing me to boot ME a few days after installation (i think it had something to do with the mbr), forcing me to format my whole hard drive, which really sucked. Thats why im trying to get all the information this time around to prevent anything like that. To get back to the point, I have read some good docs on how to dual boot, like the one at http://www.poopoccurs.com/linux/dualboot.html, but I'm not sure if it will work on my two hard drives or if some changes are nececary to work with my system. And I'd also like to know if the method above, or any other method you might suggest, will eventually mess up, like my first attemp at dual booting, and if it can be fixed, like with boot disks (im not exactly sure what happens when one of the OS's writes to the mbr or whatever, causing one OS not to run, and wether or not using boot disks would restore the comp to working order.) So basically, any advice, explainations, or links would be greatly appreciated.

Hi AJ, just yesterday i made a dual boot following the instruction from the site http://www.poopoccurs.com/linux/dualboot.html and it worked, actually i have a triple boot, because before i installed linux i had in the first harddisk win98SE and winXP both in FAT32, then i installed redhat linux 7.1 in the second hdd on the first partition and i use the XP loader to boot all of them, i don't know if it works if your winXP is in NTFS. Just follow the instruction. Good luck!

Thanx Omar, good to know that someone's gotten it to work. Just a few questions. On your second hard drive, did you install linux with a partitionless installation, or with multiple partitions? And, does linux take up your entire drive, or is some of it FAT32?

Actually i have 40gb on my second hard drive, there i have 4 windows partitions and three linux partitions:10mb of /boot, 500mb of swap and 4gb of /. The linux partition is in the beginning of the hard drive.Lilo don't boot anyway because it is in hdb1, must be in hda but this way you can erase the xp loader and then you can't boot xp anymore. So you have two options either you boot throuth your linux bootdisk or you follow this link www.poopoccurs.com/linux/dualboot.html, you don't have to do it exactly as it written, for instance i didn't use the DOS command and the attrib, i went straight away to windows xp and edited the boot.ini from there and copy the bootsect.lnx file from there too, cause as you already know my winxp is in fat32.Before you make a bootsect file you have to configure lilo because when you install linux even thou you don't put lilo in the MBR lilo will give you a dualboot option DOS and Linux, you have to write: boot=/dev/hdb1 ----my /boot partition map=/boot/map install=/boot/boot.b prompt timeout=0 linear default=linux image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.x.x-x label=linux read only root=/dev/hdb5 ---my / partition In other words first you install win98, winxp, NT whatever then linux with lilo in the first sector,make a linux bootdisk in the process, then boot linux with the bootdisk, then configure lilo.conf (is in /etc) as i told you and then do the rest as told in the instruction.Ok bye.

I AM RUNNING XP FIRST AND LINUX SECOND /DEV/HDA /DEV/HDA1 = WINDOWS XP /DEV/HDA2 = BOOT PARTITION /boot (past 1034) 57megs /DEV/HDA5 = MAIN LINUX PARTITION / /dev/hda6 = swap PROBLEM: IS THAT XP WANTS TO WRITE TO THE FIRST SECTOR LINUX WON'T BOOT PAST 1024 CYLINDER THE BOOT PARTITION FIXES THE PROBLEM.

Just some thoughts... Partition magic will rewrite the boot sector when it comes up, so if all your os's are not included, you cannot get into them without a boot disk. I don't use System Commander either, for this reason. Also, lilo may not work on big hard drives. I use it on 1 or 2 GB drives, but on my 20 GB drive, I use boot disks for Redhat, Mandrake, Windows 3.1. Windows 98 boots without any boot disk, so is used early in the morning before I get some coffee. I have Mandrake on a 1 GB slave drive, and get into it with a boot disk made during installation of Mandrake 8.0. I'm shying away from winXP, due to cost, and fear that it may not be easily reinstalled over and over as an experimenter such as I would want to do, on several machines, Hard Drives, etc. I realize that it has a bootloader, but that is not worth $200 to load an OS that takes a little while to boot up anyway. (for instance, Redhat 7) I may not be entirely correct or complete in what I have said here, so please feel free to let us all have your comments! You know, all you have to do is look at the posts in the XP board, as compared to the ones in the Linux board to see the differences. One item, not many "virus" posts on the Linux board, and also, I am suprised at how many "cant get something to work" on the XP board. Linux folks have that all the time, but with XP you would think all the hardware would work, but apparently, that is not the case.

I just follow the instruction given by http://www.poopoccurs.com/linux/dualboot.html . And i think that it's the most safety and convenience way. My system is now running on XP + Redhat 7.2 . Hope everybody success.