Windows XP install seems to consider itself to be the only OS you'd want to install - or said another way, I've never seen a Win install *ask* which partition I'd like to install on ... it just seems to assume a "c:" drive - right? Or is there an undocumented way to get the win-os installer to aim at a specific partition?
I think it would be more accurate to say that XP considers itself to be the only OS you're going to install...
I have managed to get it to install to other than the first primary partition on the drive, but even then, it insisted on putting its bootloader and some sys files on the first primary. Its safer just to let it have its way.
On the other hand, Linux does not require a primary partition, and doesn't care much where you install it, so long as there is sufficient room....
(I understand that PartedMagic can sort this out later ... but it'd be nice not to do that.)
I'm not sure that is a good idea - XP has pretty fixed ideas about what partitions are allocated, and shuffling them after install can cause it terminal confusion.
What I'm aiming at is 2 drives - one with W'doz and the other with my proper OS'es
such as VL
I am planning on using GrannyGeek's method of putting Win on first, install the 'Nuxes/lilo, then put the dd'ed copy of the boot area of each linux on the C: drive --- and have the Windows boot loader offer the OS menu.
Do you all think this will work OK ?
Just would like some peace of mind before I begin a nuclear assault on my drives
That should work without problems. I've got Vista on my T61. After I
finally convinced it to shrink to a reasonable size, I used EasyBCD to set its boot loader up as the primary boot menu, then let it select Grub which controls all my Linux installations (at the moment I've got Zenwalk 6.0, Vector 5.9 (for package building purposes), Vector 6.0 and Zenwalk 6.0 snapshot (the unstable branch) installed and selectable via the Grub menu). I use Grub because I find it much easier to set up for multiple Linux distributions than Lilo.
paul.
