Dual boot on a Compaq Presario 5WV254

[Rickdog]

I finally did it. I got my Compactor to boot up with either Windoze or RH 7.1 and my ADSL works with both on the RLT 8139 POS nic. I'm like a clam in mud. I have the best of both worlds, sort of. I removed the Me and went back to 98 and then 98SE. I repartioned the HD in half. Half for Windoze 98 and half for Linux. I know that's not the best or fastest way to run the drive, but at least I have it all working until I come up with a better plan. I have my HP CD writer on windoze, that's why I like to keep it around. I then had to reinstall all the drivers cuz Compactor doesn't give you any on CD, so I got them all off the net. The only drawback is that I have to boot Linux from A: floppy and its kind of slow. I'm going to try to make a boot CD and see if that will work.

[bdg1983]

Why do you have to boot from floppy?

RH7.1 is supposed to include the version of Lilo that supports booting past the 1024 cylinder or have you installed Lilo in the Linux partition and thus need a bootdisk.

If you installed Lilo in the Linux partition, then setup /etc/lilo.conf to also boot Windows, run /sbin/lilo and then set the Linux partition as active.

[Rickdog]

LNG, I have had trouble trying to get any kind of a dual boot. So, I repartitioned with fdisk in ms-dos. It would only let me make two partions.. I installed windoze first, cuz last time I tried to install after
rh 7.1, it wanted to clear the whole drive before installing. Thats why I ended up with all of the RH install on one partition. I totally new linux as you can tell. I have another machine that is dedicated linux box also, so it's not a real big deal right now. It would be nice to get the Lilo working right, but I'm not good enough with the commands yet. I wanted to get into linux cuz my windows was not stable, froze up and hangs all the time. anyway, thanks for the info and reply. Rickdog

[bdg1983]

Like I said, you should be able to dualboot without having to use a bootdisk.

Add

other=/dev/hda1
label=windows
table=/dev/hda

to /etc/lilo.conf

Rerun /sbin/lilo and use fdisk to set the Linux partition as active and you should be able to boot both Windows and Linux.

[Rickdog]

LNG, since I was dumb and partitioned my hd into a C: primary dos partition and the extended partition into a logical disk drive (D :), the install of RH 7.1 went as a partitionless install leaving me devoid of the lilo files and thus the necessity of having to use a boot disk.
A lesson to be patient and to do the research before partitioning and installing. I don't think there is much I know how to do about it other than to repartition, format, install all software for both systems, etc. :(

[Rickdog]

I finally got the dual boot working with Lilo and the MBR so I can boot from HD to OS of my choice. Sweeeeeeeet! You must remember to install the LILO in the master boot record and hope you can get your /boot accepted after cylinder 1024 if your dos partition is in ahead of it , I think, anyway it sure does work once you install it properly, thanks to LNG, I kept working at it and finally got it. :D

[bdg1983]

Glad to hear you got it working.

A lesson to be patient and to do the research before partitioning and installing.

I couldn't agree more.