Windows ME / Linux Dual Boot (The hard way?)

[Mikenell]

Ok, I'm really bored at the moment, so I'm gonna post how I setup my Win ME / Linux dual boot system, even though probably no one cares. To start with I had windows me installed alone. So I got an old dos 6.22 disk set, put in disk 1 and restarted the computer, dos installation started up and asked if I wanted to configure my hard drive so I chose yes, it formatted and installed dos. After that was done, I restarted and put in a windows 98 boot disk (for some reason using it without installing dos first wouldnt let me see the c: drive) when it asked I chose to start the computer with cd rom support, then when I got a prompt, I copied my hard drive manufacturers hard drive formatting / partitioning utility from a cd onto drive c and ran it from the hard drive. I set my partition values (4gb for linux, 13gb for windows) and when I needed to, put in my windows 98 bootup disk. When the program had finished, I restarted the computer, got to the c prompt and put in the boot disk once again, then I went to a: typed fdisk, and deleted the 4gb partition. Then I restarted again and put in a partition magic boot disk, when partition magic was loaded I moved my 12gb partition to the end of the drive, making all the 4gb of free space at the front. And then created a 128mb linux swap partition at the end of the free space, I then allocated the rest of the free space to a linux native partition at the start of the drive and chose apply, when partition magic was finished formatting/moving etc I restarted and when I got the c prompt, put the msdos 6.22 disk 1 disk back in the drive, I copied mscdex.exe from it to c: and tehn put in my cd rom drive driver disk. I installed it from the disk which setup both my cd drives. After it was done I restarted and when I got the c: prompt, put in the windows me cd, changed to e: and then typed setup.
ThaI finished setting up windows millennium and then put the linux cd in the drive, used rawrite to write a bootimage to a floppy disk, restarted the computer and setup linux using the disk.
Thats it. I have linux and windows millennium dual booting, but I'm gonna have to do it all again in a sec ready for debian.
Unless you can suggest an easier way...
Mikenell

[Milo7777]

This seems like the hard way.

I reinstaled Linux (Mandrake 7.1). I have WinME (hda1), Mandrake (hda2), FreeBSD (hdb1), and Caldera Linux 2.4 tech preview (hdb2, and dos fat32 (hdb3) partitions. When I reinstalled Mandrake, I used grub or lilo to boot into the system since boot magic is not magic with Win ME.

It works for every system except Caldera. I think I have to reinstall.

[Sweede]

Man, and i thought i went through a lot setting up my 6 booting system of..
WinME
W2k
Redhat 7.0
Redhat 6.2
Debian
Slackware

All of the windows 2000 boot loader.

[joweilee]

For dual/triple booting with Win2k, is it better to use the Win2k boot loader rather than Lilo or Grub?

[Sweede]

oh hell yea

install linux, DO NOT INSTALL LILO ON THE MBR.
install lilo onto the ROOT partition of your linux install.

make your bootable floppy, boot your linux system.

make sure that your /etc/lilo.conf has the ROOT and BOOT partition the same ( /dev/hda6 )

run lilo if need be.

then type
dd if=/dev/hda6 of=/bootsect.lnx count=1 bs=512

copy the bootsect.lnx file to a DOS formated floppy or a fat32 partition, and put it on the primary drive (c:\)

edit the BOOT.INI file and include

C:\BOOTSECT.LNX = "Linux 2.4.0-0.26"

(THERE must be a carrige return after the last line)

rinse and repeat for each distro.

just make sure that you DO NOT EVER install lilo onto the MBR, and keep your boot floppys all together http://www.linuxnewbie.org/ubb/smile.gif


btw. updating the kernel can be a pain, after doin the kernel thing. mkbootdisk --device {kernel-version}

then boot that floppy and repeat above said steps

[joweilee]

Sweede, I'd never consider installing Lilo to the MBR. That's some bad karma man.

[dgcartel]

I JUST FOLLOWED SWEEDES INSTRUCTIONS AND WHEN I GO TO BOOT DEBIAN I GET

LI

p.s using nt's bootloader and 2 disks 1st is winnt and 2nd is deb both 13gb

[ndogg]

After my experience on installing Linux on a friend's computer with Windows ME, use GRUB. LILO doesn't seem to work when ME is installed. When you use GRUB, it is still a good idea to put the Windows partition at the front of the drive.

------------------
Too much Sun can give you cancer. Windows break too easily.
Apples/Macintoshes can rot. BSD... sounds too much like LSD.
Penguins are the only animals sophisticated enough to wear a
tuxedo.

Linux, the only one with the Penguin.

http://ndogg.n3.net

[Sweede]

Originally posted by dgcartel:
I JUST FOLLOWED SWEEDES INSTRUCTIONS AND WHEN I GO TO BOOT DEBIAN I GET

LI

p.s using nt's bootloader and 2 disks 1st is winnt and 2nd is deb both 13gb

had you followed my instructions, you would NOT HAVE INSTALLED LILO TO YOUR MBR (/dev/hda) , you should of installed it to your root partition, such as /dev/hda5

and sorry, i would post how to fix it, but you'd probably misread that too and screw it all up.



[This message has been edited by Sweede (edited 10 October 2000).]