Hello, I'm a newbie at linux and would like to setup Win2K,XP and Red Hat 7.0 but I need some help. I currently have XP and Red Hat loaded, but I have to boot from the bootdisk to get Red Hat. My partition is NTFS for XP and I know that isn't compatible with Linux, thus that creates the problem. I'm going to format the drive and totally reload all O/S's and I know to make Windows partitions fat32. I plan on using only one HDD that is 20gig. My questions are: 1)How do I partition my drive? (Will be using PM 7.0) I read I should make a small bootable partition Fat32 and this way I should be able to boot all systems without a bootdisk. 2)How big should I make this bootable partition, and when loading Windows what gets loaded on that partition. Is it all the system files (Windows, Winnt, etc), then keep all data and programs loaded on another partition? 3)My last question is which order do I load the systems in. Is there any particular order? Like I said, I’m very new to this and would appreciate any help from you experts! Thanks.

You can dual boot W2k/XP on NTFS and Linux. I have a pentium II 266 dual booting W2k and Linux, no problem. You'll need a bios that supports LBA ( most PII and later support this )and a recent version of LILO. I'm pretty sure the LILO supplied with RH 7.0, Suse 7.1 and Mandrake 8.0 work. Later version of these distributions will also do the job. Maybe older distros will work too, but i'm not sure about that. Okay, here we go: Partition your HD with PM, 1 XP/W2k NTFS 2 XP/W2k FAT32 3 Linux swap 4 Linux /boot 5 Linux / Install W2k/XP first, nothing special here, just a normal install using NTFS. Now install Linux, and put LILO on the first sector of your root partition, NOT the MBR ! Make sure you create a bootdisk when linux install ask's for it. Now boot up linux with the bootdisk, login as "root" and edit /etc/lilo.conf Change "timeout=50" to "timeout=0" next go to the /boot directory and type "lilo" You should see something like: windows Linux * Now run "lilo -v -s linux.bin" This will create a file called linux.bin, copy this file to a floppy and restart your computer. ( take the floppy out of floppy drive ) If all went okay it should boot with W2k/XP. copy linux.bin from floppy to root of W2k/XP (c:\linux.bin) Edit c:\boot.ini ( it's hidden, read only and system file, so "attrib boot.ini -h -r -s" or use properties from explorer )and add the following line at the end of the file: c:\linux.bin="Red Hat 7.0" And thats it, reboot and you should be able to boot W2k/XP and linux from the W2k/XP bootloader. with W2k/XP I mean either windows2000 OR XP It doesn't matter which you install first. You allready had Linux installed so I assumed you know how to edit a file and copy it to a floppy from linux. Hope this helps ( I've wrote better instructions then this before, but i'm tired and want to go to bed..... ) -Ozzy

You can dual boot W2k/XP on NTFS and Linux. I have a pentium II 266 dual booting W2k and Linux, no problem. You'll need a bios that supports LBA ( most PII and later support this )and a recent version of LILO. I'm pretty sure the LILO supplied with RH 7.0, Suse 7.1 and Mandrake 8.0 work. Later version of these distributions will also do the job. Maybe older distros will work too, but i'm not sure about that. Okay, here we go: Partition your HD with PM, 1 XP/W2k NTFS 2 XP/W2k FAT32 3 Linux swap 4 Linux /boot 5 Linux / Install W2k/XP first, nothing special here, just a normal install using NTFS. Install the next W2k/XP, there should be no problems here either, if all went okay you can select both of them from the W2k/XP bootloader. Now install Linux, and put LILO on the first sector of your root partition, NOT the MBR ! Make sure you create a bootdisk when linux install ask's for it. Now boot up linux with the bootdisk, login as "root" and edit /etc/lilo.conf Change "timeout=50" to "timeout=0" next go to the /boot directory and type "lilo" You should see something like: windows Linux * Now run "lilo -v -s linux.bin" This will create a file called linux.bin, copy this file to a floppy and restart your computer. ( take the floppy out of floppy drive ) If all went okay it should boot with W2k/XP. copy linux.bin from floppy to root of W2k/XP (c:\linux.bin) Edit c:\boot.ini ( it's hidden, read only and system file, so "attrib boot.ini -h -r -s" or use properties from explorer )and add the following line at the end of the file: c:\linux.bin="Red Hat 7.0" And thats it, reboot and you should be able to boot W2k/XP and linux from the W2k/XP bootloader. with W2k/XP I mean either windows2000 OR XP It doesn't matter which you install first. You allready had Linux installed so I assumed you know how to edit a file and copy it to a floppy from linux. Hope this helps ( I've wrote better instructions then this one, but i'm tired and want to go to bed..... ) -Ozzy

Ooops, Didn't mean to post it twice, take the bottom one, I forget to tell you to install the second OS in the first reply. ( I really need some sleep ) -Ozzy

I'll give that a try. Thanks!!

You can also do this: First install NT and XP and get that working so you have a menu at startup that allows you to choose between the two. Next make a boot disk with fdisk on it (a boot disk for win 98 will work fine). You might want to use this disk to figure out what the active partition is if you don't already know whitch OS controls the boot process. Then install linux and make sure you put lilo on the first sector of the boot partition. After linux is running open your lilo.conf file in the /etc directory. change the timeout value to something other than 0 (50 or 100 should work). Add these lines. other=/dev/hda1 label=Windows_XP_and_2000 If you have a hard drive larger than 8.4gigs you have to change linear to lba32 in this same file. hda1 is the first partition on your hard drive. You might need to change it to hda2 or hda3 depending on which partition controls the boot process for xp and win_2000 (this file gives you options at startup of which os to boot to much like boot.ini in windows NT). Then go to a linux bash shell and type 'lilo -t' to test and see if the changes in the linux.conf file are ok. If you get no errors then type 'lilo' at the same shell. You will then need to reboot with your windows boot disk. At the dos command prompt type fdisk. Use fdisk to change the active partition to the linux boot partition. When you restart lilo will give you the option to boot to linux or xp/win_2000. If you choose the later you will be taken to the menu that allows you to choose between XP or win 2000. You will not need a boot disk to load either operating system. My email is GeoHoffman49431@aol.com if you have any questions. Good luck, -Geo by the way why do you want both xp and win 2000? I have found them to be almost identical except for the snazzy new interface in XP.

I'm amazed at the stupidity of this forum. NTFS read is natively supported in the kernel. In addition, there are tons of EXT2FS IFS modules for NT/2K/XP. I have this same exact setup as you do at home and it works fine.