Dual Boot Problem

[Peter Shipley]

I am new to Linux so I built a PC to try it out. The PC has never had MS Windows installed, so the had disk has no FAT/NTFS partitions. I simply installed Linux and it is running well. Problem is I now wish to create a dual boot PC, however whenever I try to install MS Windows (98 or XP) the installation hangs at the checking hardware stage. I guess I need to re-format the hard disk, installing Windows followed by Linux. As I have no floppy drive any suggestions as to where I go next?

[serz]

Linux can't be causing your WinXP install to hang because it has nothing to do with it. I don't think a disk format will fix that..

[rong]

however whenever I try to install MS Windows (98 or XP) the installation hangs at the checking hardware stage. I guess I need to re-format the hard disk, installing Windows followed by Linux. As I have no floppy drive any suggestions as to where I go next?

Yes, a fresh start is the recommended approach. While Windows can be installed after Linux it can be tricky to set up. So I suggest you install Win first but Partition the Hard Drive so that Windows has it's own partition with whatever size you think best to accomodate both Win and LInux. You will need to at least 3 partitions, one for Win and at least 2 for Linux.

But, the Win installation hanging at the hardware check stage sounds like the hurdle you need to figure out first. Does it always hang at the same place? More often than not this is a RAM issue: i.e. bad memory. But it may also have something to do with how you formatted/partitioned your Hard Drive.

[sarlacii]

however whenever I try to install MS Windows (98 or XP) the installation hangs at the checking hardware stage. I guess I need to re-format the hard disk, installing Windows followed by Linux. <snip>

Yes, a fresh start is the recommended approach. While Windows can be installed after Linux it can be tricky to set up. So I suggest you install Win first but Partition the Hard Drive so that Windows has it's own partition with whatever size you think best to accomodate both Win and LInux. <snip>

But, the Win installation hanging at the hardware check stage sounds like the hurdle you need to figure out first. <snip> But it may also have something to do with how you formatted/partitioned your Hard Drive.

I have just experienced, and solved, this very problem, after a few days with my new PC, ripping my hair out when I couldn't get this to work the way I wanted them too.

So, had XP installed in 1st partition, and then installed FC3. But Grub 0.95 which comes with FC3 boots to a grub prompt without loading the graphical menu. Why it does this I do not know. Also, my BIOS (and you may have the same problem) only supports boot partitions that are within 8Gb of the start of the disk... so the fact that I had a 10Gb XP partiton and then my linux /boot partition meant that I could not boot FC3 (Grub simply returned an error "cylinder count too large for BIOS" or somethig like that). So to solve this I moved my /boot partition to the beginning of the drive, with the XP partition after it. I had to delete the partitions to move them (obviously) and so after re-installing FC3, which still loaded to a Grub prompt (grrr) I then tried to re-install XP. Guess what? Yip, XP install hangs on the "detecting and configuring hardware" stage. Okay, so the solution?

The solution in my case was to put the XP partition at the start of the disk - like previously - but I made it only 6Gb in size, so that the /boot partition that folowed it was within the 8Gb limit of the stupid BIOS. This allowed me to install XP again (having deleted all the other partitions just for good measure). I then installed RedHat 9 (old faithful) with a small root partition, and used it to add the v0.93 Grub bootloader to the /boot partition. This worked perfectly, and Grub booted to a graphical menu! The next step was to install FC3, but during the partitioning process I made sure to tell the FC3 installer NOT to format the /boot partition (nor my /home folder). I also told FC3 to NOT install a boot loader.

On rebooting (after a successful install) I discovered that FC3 had correctly inserted it's boot parameters into the existing RH9 grub.conf, so that I did not need the manual entries that I had made. I can now boot XP, FC3 or RH9 at will, from a graphical Grub menu. Finally.

[rong]

Great to hear. Win always requires that it's Master Boot Record be on the first sector of the first partition so always have to work around that issue.

Nothing like multiple installations to acquire good experience.

[sarlacii]

<snip> Nothing like multiple installations to acquire good experience.

Well, informative though it was, I could have done without the 5th re-install. Two or so would have been fine. :D

[duffman108]

why can't windows and linux just get a long