XP home and Red Hat 7.3 partition

[mafondue]

Hi! i am trying to install XP and Red Hat in a dual boot mode.

I have a single 80 Gig harddrive wich i had partionned like this:

C: OS 15 GIG
D: Programs 20 GIG
E: Data 20 Gig

/ 15 GIG
/swap 1 Meg.

I used Lilo but even though i seen both OS in Lilo startup when choosing DOS it display Dos Loading and wait there.

So my question is how should i partionned my HDA.

Thank you in advance

[CZAR]

do you have your swap partition at 1mb? i'm kinda new to linux but i don't think thats good.

delete your non-XP used partitions and leave them as "unallocated space" then when installing Redhat choose "make partitions from unallocated space" and it will set them up automatically.

and don't use LILO or GRUB,too many headaches, just boot linux from a 3.5 bootdisk.

[sgs521]

hmm.. booting from a 3.5 is fine and dandy, but that tends to get very old very quickly for me. Constantly having to make sure the floppy's in the drive.. plus i remotely access my machine a lot and sometimes switch it from linux to windows for whatever reason.. or boot back from windows into linux.. which I couldn't do if I had to have a floppy being inserted or removed each time.

mafondue, I would suggest trying the different boot loaders and see which one you have the best results with. There are many available, the two major ones i'm aware of being grub and lilo.

[CrashTestDummy9]

Originally posted by CZAR
do you have your swap partition at 1mb? i'm kinda new to linux but i don't think thats good.

delete your non-XP used partitions and leave them as "unallocated space" then when installing Redhat choose "make partitions from unallocated space" and it will set them up automatically.

and don't use LILO or GRUB,too many headaches, just boot linux from a 3.5 bootdisk. Grub is a great bootloader . Its easy to configure . 4 lines to enter . A LiLo config file looks like opening a binary in a notepad to me . If you have gobs of ram you wont ever touch your swap unless you are writing the graphics to Shrek3 . Ive got a 512mb swap and as far as I know Linux has never touched it and ive only got 512mb of ram . You dont need more than 5 gb for WinXP System(OS install) make other partitions according to your install habits . I never install Win apps in C: but thats cause I know how many times im gonna redo my Win install . I dont like losing all my software installations everytime Windows wants to take a dive . As a suggestion , My disks are as follows . hda is 5gb(WinXP OS) , 11gb(Games) , 11gb (Installs) , 11gb(Backups(Drive images and such) . hdb is 6gb (Redhat OS /w 512mb swap , 4gb (MDK9.0) , 4gb(Currently Debian but it was a flop because of me) . Although others will tell you differently , putting the bootloader (LiLo,Grub) in the MBR of hda is the easiest and most successful way to multiboot (at least for a newbie) .

[mafondue]

Thank you for your answer, i am almost there.

When i start the machine i get the Grub Menu( Grub Loading stage 2)

When i pick DOS i get the following

Booting "Dos" then
rootnoverify (hd0,6)
chainloader +1

then it reboot so i believe i just have to change HD0,6 to HD0,1 ??

If i pick Linux i get
Welcome to Linux at localhost panel

Login
Password
Session Type default
kde
failsafe
gnome

I install kde, so choose it, then as userid i use root with my password wich i know is good because i used the same almost everywhere, so how can i fix it.

Thank you in advance

[CZAR]

Originally posted by mafondue
Thank you for your answer, i am almost there.

When i start the machine i get the Grub Menu( Grub Loading stage 2)

When i pick DOS i get the following

Booting "Dos" then
rootnoverify (hd0,6)
chainloader +1

then it reboot so i believe i just have to change HD0,6 to HD0,1 ??

If i pick Linux i get
Welcome to Linux at localhost panel

Login
Password
Session Type default
kde
failsafe
gnome

I install kde, so choose it, then as userid i use root with my password wich i know is good because i used the same almost everywhere, so how can i fix it.

Thank you in advance
well, i tried to warn you about those damn bootloaders....