Win2K, RedHat7.1, and one Hard drive

[taz1004]

Totally newbie here. I've been having partition nightmare. I partitioned my 60GB hard drive several ways and still can't even install RedHat.

Primary partition at 4GB NTFS and installed Win2K.

Left remaining hard drive unpartitioned (tried partitioning it as extended as well) and tried installing RedHat 7.1 into the second partition which is now 56GB.

I couldn't even install it due to that 1024 cylinder message.

Is there step by step guide on how to dual boot between Win2K and RedHat7.1?

--BrianC

[ille_pugil42]

haven't a copy of win2k for home (not that I want to), so I don't know personally. But check this out:

OS Booting (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/nhf/intel/osbooting/)

its the listing of NHF's for dual/triple/whatever booting linux and other os's. HTH

[taz1004]

I've already read everything there but still confused because I didn't see NHF specifically for Win2K.

Looks like I need to go with alternate boot loader.

This LoadLin sounds good and simple but does it also work with Win2K?

--BrianC

[Big_Jeff Stud]

hey there,
don't worry I feel your pain. Dual booting an be a pain. Let me try and walk you through it. I have done this (and screwed it up) a billion times. But don't worry I've learned a few things along the way and getting right is one of them.

Since you have such a big drive this shouldn't be too tough. You will have to create several partitions because of that pesky LILO limitation. Start from a clean drive and go start your Win2k install. When you get to the partition screen, set up a 100 MB FAT C: drive. This is the system partition in the Windows world. Then set up 3-4 GB NTFS partition for Win2k(D :). The 3-4 GB part. is called the boot partition. This is where the OS will actually reside. The files that boot Win2k are on the system partition (C :). Microsoft named them backwards for some reason. Finish up the Win2k install as normal. Now, boot to your RH 7.1 install disc. Begin install as normal and instead of disk druid, use fdisk. Create a partition in fdisk that ends below the 1024th cylinder. There is an option, when creating partitions, to use size in MB or to just use the cylinder or cluster # or whatever. Just make sure that the partition ends with 1023. It should be around 4 GB or so. Maybe more, I can't remember off hand. After fdisk, use druid to set your mount point to / and create your swap space. When you get the ooption to install LILO, tell it o install to the MBR. At the bottom of screen are the choices for your OSes. Make sure that for Win2k you have the path set to /dev/hda1. And for Linux the default will be fine. I think it will be /dev/hda6. Just make sure your C: drive stays as a FAT partition. This should work for you as its worked for me a million times before. It took me a while to find the work around for LILO's limitations, but this is what I've found works for me. And by the way, you can always go into disk administrator and create more partitions so you won't be stuck with 3-4 GB. The same with Linux. You can always just mount more partitions for extra space. You've got plenty to spare.

Any questions email me at jkvoth@linkline.com

[Big_Jeff Stud]

I don't know what those goofy smiles are doing in that last post, but they are supposed to be colons. C: and D: as in C drive and D drive. Sorry for the confusion.