Hi Guys, Can any one suggest me a solution for the following scenario? I have a Dell optilplex GX 240 box running XP pro and RH 7.3. I did the dual boot this way. 1) Installed XP Professional on the first 5GB of the 30GB hard disk. 2) Installed RH Linux 7.3 in the next 10GB of the Hard disk after creating partition with Partition Magic 7 3) Created the rest of the space on the disk as a logical partition for Windows XP. I tried to install Linux in the second part(starting from 15GB) of the Hard disk but it would not be recognized as it might want to be a part of the MBR. ( I am not sure why installation of linux went fine when i tried to install it starting from 5GB and didnt start at all when I tried to start it from 15GB). I understand that the order is important. How about installing Linux first and then install windows xp? But Windows might over write the MBR and linux maynot come up at all. What I am trying to do is have only one partition for windows and one partition for linux 15 GB each.. The order doesnt matter but need the box in the above shape. Any Thoughts.. I would truely appreciate if any one can point me to a step by step instruction.

The best thing is, like you did, to install WinXP and then Linux. LiLO has no problem to handel XP. In earlier Linux Versions there was a need to put the /boot within the first thousend blocks of a hard drive. I am not shure, but maybe even Windwos has to start in that range. I think this is your problem. Linux only want to write the bootloader (in most cases LILO) in the MBR, but this has nothing to do with your problem. I have WinXP and Linux installed on one computer, too. I created a small partion ~100mb for /boot. After that the WinXp Partion starts.And the main Linux Partion is at the end. This works fine. Regards Jenne Ps: If you find missspelled text, make a copy and be happy :-))))

Thanks a lot for your reply. Yep you did address my problem. But can you make it more clear how you did this on your box. Did you create partitions before you installed XP? If not where will XP get installed on the whole disk. I assume it will be in the begining of the disk. If XP is already installed how will you create a boot partition of 100MB before your XP partition. Thanks...

I have a box running both XP and Linux. You don't really require the /boot. This is how I did it: 1) Create your partitions using either fdisk or Toms Root Boot (http://www.toms.net/rb/) 2) Install XP on the first 5GB* 3) Install Linux on the following 15GB* * This is in your scenario. NB-LILO will be written to the MBR but your XP bootloader will still be intact (if you are using a fairly recent release of Linux, eg. SuSE 8.0 of Mandrake 8.1)

Greg, I understand that I can do that and thats what I already did. What I am looking at is this 1) 30 GB hard disk divided into 15 each or atleast 10 for XP and doesnt care how much linux is gonna take. But I want single partitions for both linux and xp each atleast 10GB in size. What I have now is XP on first 5 GB Linux on next 15 GB XP again on last 10GB I dont want two XP partitions. I want one single contiguous one in the begining or in the end. Thats what I am looking at. Thanks

Solarisboy, I had a similar problem last night, but my result was much worse then yours. I had an existing version of XP installed on an extended partition and I created a partition for linux as primary. Linux installed great and I configured GRUB boot loader to load XP. Well because it wasn't a primary partition it didnt work. So in my infinite wisdom I uninstalled Linux and hoped XP would boot up, no such luck. Now my MBR is all messed up and I dont know what to do. However I have learned the proper way to do things if you can start from scratch. Clean off your HD of every partition and create a 15GB primary partition for windows. Leave the other 15GB free space. Install XP on the first partition. After that is done install linux and have it create its two or three partitions in the remaining free space. After you are done you can add a line in your boot.ini to load linux. Hope this helps!!

Looks like a better sol.. As I have said My problem is If I made 2 partitions 15 GB each and installed XP pro on the first partition and try to install Linux it doesnt get installed as the second partition is not being seen.( some how it is not being recognized ). What Shud happen is it shud load linux in the free space creating ext partition and shud fail showing up linux until boot.ini is changed. Once the relevant changes to boot.ini are made the system should show the linux up on boot. B T W You didnt tell what changes we need to make to boot.ini and any files to be created in Linux to be recognized. Thanks..