One HD Dual Boot SUSE10 and XP Pro

[ttujjf]

I have one 80GB hard drive on a Dell Dimension 8200 Windows XP SP2. The entire drive is formated to NTSF for Windows. I bought one of those for Dummies books and it came with a SUSE Linux 10 Special Edition DVD. I was wanting to install both of them on this one hard drive to have a dual boot system. On step five in the books installation process it says:

5. If you are going to add SUSE Linus to a PC that already has any version of Microsoft Windows on the hard drive, edit the Partitioning setting and select the hard drive as the location where you want to install SUSE Linux. Then YaST gives you the option to shrink the Windows partition. In particular, YaST can resize Windows partition, everything is safe until you confirm that installation should begin.

So is this saying that I have to go in and split the HD into two partitions manually, myself, or that the YaST will do it for me?

And what about the part where it says "everything is safe until you confirm that installation should begin," does this mean that it will possibly corrupt part of the windows partition when it installs Linux?

Thanks for your help!

[devils casper]

So is this saying that I have to go in and split the HD into two partitions manually, myself, or that the YaST will do it for me?

Yast wont do it for you. you have resize partition Manually.

And what about the part where it says "everything is safe until you confirm that installation should begin," does this mean that it will possibly corrupt part of the windows partition when it installs Linux?

yes ! its possible that you mess-up partition table.

download GParted LiveCD, burn .iso image to disc and boot from it. shrink NTFS partition.
dont format new space. leave it as unpartitioned/free.
select 'Unpartitioned/Free space' in Partition section during SuSe installation.







casper

[hughitt1]

GParted LiveCD works really well- i just did similar thing on my laptop to make two new partitions.

Incidentally, suse 10.2 is gonna be released very soon (a week or so), so you might wanna wait to get the new version, it should be pretty nice.

goodluck!
Keith

[ttujjf]

ok, I used the Gparted software and now my 80 GB HD is split into two parts, I have about 50 GB for Windows and made about 25 GB free. I put in the SUSE DVD and started going through the setup and got to the installation settings page where it checks my hard drive and gave me a partitioning options, mine said:

Create swap partition /dev/hda2 1011.9 MB
Create root partition /dev/hda3 24.3 GB
Set mount point of /dev/hda1 to windows/C

The first two operations looked ok to me but the "Set mount point" one scared me a little. What is it doing, will it hurt Windows at all?

Thanks!

[devils casper]

The first two operations looked ok to me but the "Set mount point" one scared me a little. What is it doing, will it hurt Windows at all?

No. it is mounting your windows partition so that you can access it in SuSe.
Go ahead. nothing to worry !






casper

[ttujjf]

Ok I have it installed and am using it now. thanks for all your help. I'm going to start playing around and getting used to my new system. Thanks Again!!

[ttujjf]

I was just wondering if you could give a short general explanation on how to install most applications and programs. Just list a few of the basic steps, maybe just walk me through and example of how to install/compile Mplayer.

[devils casper]

check this tutorial for installing Softwares in Linux.
check this link too.






casper

[lnxlrnr]

Hi...
I'm havin issues trying to install Linux on my Dell Inspiron 6400 Notebook. I would appreciate ur guidance in doin so.

this notebook has the "MediaDirect" application installed on it which wud enable me to watch DVDs without booting into windows.
i'm familiar with the conventional method of installing Linux using the GRUB, wherein Linux wud give the options to boot.
however, i was informed that doing so, i wud disturb the Windows MBR and thereby i may lose the MediaDirect feature to play DVDs directly.

i would like Windows to give me the boot options and retain the MediaDirect feature...

plz help me out here....

[devils casper]

i was informed that doing so, i wud disturb the Windows MBR and thereby i may lose the MediaDirect feature to play DVDs directly.

hi lnxlrnr !

Welcome to LinuxForums.

you are right. its quite possible that you wont be able to play DVD through MediaDirect after installing GRUB in Windows MBR.

i would like Windows to give me the boot options and retain the MediaDirect feature...

execute 'notepad boot.ini' at Windows command line prompt C:\> and post the contents of boot.ini file here.






casper