dual boot with Windows XP

[mojogil]

I'm sure this has been discussed plenty, but I can't seem to find it or I'm at the wrong forum. I just picked up SUSE 9.1 and installed it on my machine and so far I really like it. This is my first ever attempt with Linux. I want to know the best way to have a dual boot situation so my kids can still run their programs. Please be specific as to what you use for partitioning, what order you would do things in etc.
Thank you very much!
Gil

[infiniphunk]

You are in the right forum. Look for my post here. (http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=133961&perpage=15&highlight=suse 9\.1 pro&pagenumber=4)

That should be your solution.

[saikee]

mojogil,

Would help us to offer specific suggestions if you are specfic about your hardware.

Do you have more than one hard disk? How large is the hard disk? Have you got free partitions etc...

If you have XP installed prior to Linux then Suse would have picked it up and offered to you as a booting choice.

If you have it on the other disk then we can tailor our suggestion.

[mojogil]

Thanks for the help. I have a P4 machine that I put together myself with a Samsung 120 gig sata drive. There is only one partition with Windows XP installed. When I tried to install SuSE Linux there was a hang up with (not quite sure) "searching for info files".
Two specific questions:
1. If Windows is installed, does there need to be a partition already in place to install Linux, or does Linux take care of that. And, do you install by having the disc in during the bios boot up or wait until windows is already fully booted.

2. Is it better just to have two hard drives, one for Windows and one for Linux, and how does that work? Would you just change which hard drive is the chosen first in bios when you want to switch? Does there have to be a "Master" and "Slave"?

Thank you,
Gil

[saikee]

You see that is why we need clarification.

1st post - "just picked up SUSE 9.1 and installed it on my machine and so far I really like it". That means you have installed it.

2nd post - "There is only one partition with Windows XP installed. When I tried to install SuSE Linux there was a hang up". So have you installed Suse or not?

And you question to dual boot both systems!

I take it you may have two machines and the two systems may have been installed into different machines. If this is not the case then you may have overwritten XP with Suse. So can you clarify?

In general a Linux need hard disk space for installation as it is very careful not to damage the existing operating system, unless of course insisted by the user to overwrite an existing partition or given a complete freedom to rearrane the hard disk.

If you install XP first (recommended as the easiest way), leave 5Gb for Suse and say between 1 to 3 Gb space for a swap partition (scratch area) the install Suse. It is a characteristic of a modern Linux to include it as a boot choice if a bootloader is detected in its partition. Thus XP will be bootable by Suse's bootloader which is Grub.

A 20 Gb partition is more than enough for XP if you store your data away from the operating system. You don't have all the space allocated to run an operating system so leave the unallocated space for the future use. It is a much harder job to resize a partition to the space back.

[mojogil]

Sorry for the confusion, I see I was a little unclear.
I put a second older hard drive in the machine and just unplugged the SATA drive and plugged in the IDE drive, then changed them in the BIOS. It was just a pain to plug and unplug every time.
Thanks for the help!
Gil

[saikee]

mojogil

My suggestion for you is hook the IDE as the first boot disk before the SATA.

In Suse desktop highlight the text file /boot/grub/menu.lst and open it with Kwrite for editing. You need to log in as the root user to have the privileage to alter this boot menu file. Add the following lines to its bottom and save the file.

titile This is my XP from the SATA disk
map (hd0) (hd1)
map (hd1) (hd0)
rootnoverify (hd1,0)
chainloader +1

1st line is for you to see it from the boot menu
2nd & 3rd line to to cheat XP in believing it is the first boot disk
4th line point to the location for Grub to load XP
5th line is the standard method for Grub to load any system.

Your XP was installed when in first boot disk and the above map statements swap the disk order. Thus nothing in your your XP needs to be changed.

Let us know how you get on.