Dual booting help


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I just installed LinuxOS 2004 and really like it but can't get a boot menu to work.

I have tried editing lilo.conf and lilo -v and all kinds of stuff, But none helps.

I finally used my windows xp disk to "FIXMBR" so I could get back to my beloved XP.

I have searched on google too much already.

Can I add Linux on HDB/6 to my NT boot menu?

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LinuxOS 2004??? :o

I am still way back on Fedora Core 1 with Linux kernel 2.4! :rofl:

Now, if you could tell us your current drive configuration (how many drives, and how they are partitioned) with XP, and let us know what distro you really tried, maybe we could help see what went wrong. As far as I know, there is no such thing as "LinuxOS 2004". Mandrake, Fedora, SuSE, Debian, Gentoo, Slackware, Damn Small Linux, maybe even (YIKES!) Caldera?

You *can* add a Linux boot to your NT/XP/2k boot menu, but it is really ugly. I recommend GRUB for booting. And, if you were suing GRUB, that might explain why LILO didn't work... :unsure:

Let us know! :yes:

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Here is a link to the OS home page

PCLinuxOS

It is a livecd distro with the option of hard drive install. I installed it and had it working and I used it for 2 days, but I needed to get back into Windows XP. My HDD has 4 partitions including linux and its swap. The HDD is on the second IDE, hence hdb

Windows XP is on partition #1, FAT32, C:\ (hdb1)

NTFS partition #2 D:\ (hdb5)

Linux ext3 partition #3 (hdb6)

Linux swap partition #4

booting off of the cd does not seem to let me into the hard drive install so I can't reinstall lilo that way.

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Knowing what PCLinux was helps! :)

Now, you installed it to your hard drive.

Did it "dual boot" for you back then? Could you select either Linux or Windows on boot?

What is it doing now? Does it still allow selection of both?

Did you want to remove it now, and use only Windows? You say you installed it, and had it working, so I am assuming that it isn't booting right any more.

I also did some research on adding Linux to the NT/XP/2k boot.ini file, and it isn't as ugly as I had thought. Read this for more information. You need to use LILO (apparently), and need to install your bootsector information onto your Linux partition, per the instructions, and NOT the MBR. Then you can copy the bootsector data onto a file in your Windows drive (C:\whatever), and add an entry to boot.ini to point to that file.

Let us know on those other questions, and I will try to help with that...

[EDIT: Also check out this page for some VERY good information!]

Edited by markjensen
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It never dual booted. This is to be a secondary OS to allow me to get familiar with linux.

The last step of installing was setting up the boot menu. I used the recommended settings which installed lilo to the MBR. The setup said it detected windows and would automatically add it to the boot menu, but it did not. All the new boot menu had on it was PClinuxOS. I went ahead and started linux up and started searching on how to add windows to the "lilo.conf". Finally gave up, and had to use my windows disk to reformat the MBR.

This is my first serious attempt to learn linux, I have tried at least 10 other distros before, but I really like this one. It irks me that I can't get it to boot.

After seaching on google, it seems this is a common problem, I havent found the answer yet.

Thanks for your help.

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its dead simple and easy to add linux to you xp boot loader, i used to do it all the time. now its even better, i dont need to dual boot, i just install linux on vmware and i can easily start them up in windows when i feel like playing, however only do this if you have a powerfull pc, i have 2.8Ghz and 1GB mem.

1. Install Linux boot loader on the Linux partition

2. As root cd to /boot and do the following (replace ? with the partition number)

do dd if=/dev/hda? of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

3. This creates bootsect.lnx in / , move this file to the c:\ partition in windows.

4. Add a link to the boot file in the boot.ini in windows by adding this line.

C:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"

You are done! You can now select Linux from Windows XP boot loader.

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