dual boot, order to load operating systems?

[PranksterO]

I plan on adding windows xp to my current setup. I have a 30gig drive running gentoo with a 10gb ntfs partition that I set up for xp. I remember once hearing that xp should be installed first but I already have gentoo up and running and since it takes so long to get gentoo up I really dont want to start over. My question is, will installing xp on my ntfs parition hurt anything? Thanks!

[ph34r]

Its gonna trash your boot sector so be sure you have a working boot disk for your gentoo install. Once it is on, you can modify gentoos lilo/grub info to handle both OSes.

[PranksterO]

What will it do to the boot sector? How can I fix it? Am I right by thinking that if I install XP then gentoo I would be ok?

I wont be able to make a boot floppy because my system dosent have a floppy drive. Could I just use the gentoo live cd or knoppix and fix it from there? If not, would a full re-install be my only hope?

[SuperNu]

When Windows is installed, it clears out the master boot record because there isn't supposed to be anything stored there. That means that grub or lilo is going to get removed. Your Gentoo installation is going to be fine. What you are going to need in order to be able to boot into Gentoo again is a bood cd or floppy. Once you are in Gentoo, run /sbin/lilo or grub-install /dev/hdX (wherever it is installed currently). You should be fine after that.

--SN