Dual boot with Mandrake 10.1 on Win XP machine

[Liveandletlive]

Hello,

I have been playing around with Knoppix Live CD for some time. I was very impressed with the fact that it could detect almost every hardware on my laptop (Toshiba A75-S206). After going thru so many articles, I finally decided to do a poor man's install for Knoppix. Here is what I have on my machine now

C: (hda1) NTFS ---> 21 GB Windows XP Prof (primary)
D: (hda5) NTFS ---> 27.5 GB secondary windows partition
E: CDROM
F: Fat32 (hda ---> 4 GB where I can store common data from XP and Linux
hda6 --> 7 GB ext2 Linux formatting which has grub and knoppix on it
hda7 ---> 500MB Linux swap formatting

The Grub bootloader works fine and I can load both win XP or Knoppix as and when required.

After reading a lot about different linux flavors, I decided to go with Mandrake 10.1.

I have downloaded the Mandrake 10.1 ISO DVD. I want to install it in place of Knoppix.

Could someone point me to a reliable guide? Has anyone had any experience with such situation?

I have been reading various posts where people have done installations incorrectly and lost the MBR (corrupted it ???) so that they cannot eith boot XP or Linux or both. I wanted to ask help before making mistake

Thanks in advance.

[dylunio]

Firstly get a Windows boot diskette or install disk just in case of a messup (so that you can boot windows)

Boot from the Mandrake dvd, and then during the install select to install it on hda6, and set the SWAP partition at hda7. Now Mankdrake should install over Knoppix, and the bootloader it uses LiLo, should write over GrUB, and let you boot both OS's.

If you have a problem with booting Mandrake, boot from the install cd and as one of the options should let you repaire the MBR.

If you have a problem and want to boot Windows put in the install cd an d press r to get to the recovary console were you type

fixmbr

, or with the windows bootdiskette type

fdisk /mbr

dylunio

[Liveandletlive]

Thanks for the quick response. Is there any step by step guide for the same? if not, that is fine. I will try this one out. I wanted to make sure that I do not screw up my windows partition as this is what I use at work. Installing it all over again will be a pain in the neck.

Once again, thanks a lot for the prompt reply.

[dylunio]

Liveandletlive, since you have settup your partitions already, and Mandrake has a nice GUI install, just bootup the disk and follow the install.

dylunio

[Liveandletlive]

I successfully installed Mandrake 10.1.

I had problem selecting the right graphics card during install even though I had a print out of my laptop system configuration. For anyone trying to install this in future, I would strongly suggest writing down your system details like make/model and other details for your graphics card, sound card etc. Mandrake installer let me test my selection for graphic card and monitor settings, but even when I selected that the test is not successful, it did not revert back to the defaults that it was using. So the screen got messed up and the buttons for "Help" / "Next" all went below my screen (screen got too big). I had to restart install all over again.

Otherwise everything else seemed very easy.

After I logged in, it is not detecting my built in wireless card (Atheros AR5004G Wireless Network Adapter) is not recognised by Mandrake. I tried going into the control panel and install it manually. However, it asks for drivers. Is there any place where I can get these drivers for Linux? Is there any documentation regarding the same?

Also, I have not tested my touchpad. Hope it works.

Thanks

[kemikelx]

I just finished installing Mandrake with Win2k on the same hard disk. No issue.

[Liveandletlive]

I just finished installing Mandrake with Win2k on the same hard disk. No issue.

Is your internal wireless card working?