[CoLoCo] Dual-Boot WinXP/Ubuntu Advice

John Edwards eric.the.grey at gmail.com
Tue Jan 1 19:01:40 GMT 2008


As far as installing WinXP into the partition that currently has windows on
it, it should pose no problem, so long as you make certain that you do a
clean install. Windows is notorious for having problems if you upgrade or
install over an existing installation.  I suggest you make certain you've
backed up all your documents before doing so, and format that partition.
It's easy enough to select it once you're in install process.

The main difficulty will come once you've finished, because Windows will
have overwritten Grub, and you'll no longer have dual-boot capability.  To
fix this on my test machine (I re-install windows pretty often on it...) I
use the System Rescue CD ( http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page ).

****************************************************************
*** NOTE:  I'm still a Linux noob myself, so take all  ***
*** so take all my advice with a grain of salt.  The     ***
*** procedure below worked for me, but YMMV. :)     ***
****************************************************************

Burn that to a CD before starting. Boot it up after installing windows.

The way I fix my system is do these steps (after the CD finishes booting):
> grub
> find /boot/grub/stage1  ** This tells me where it finds /boot **
> root (hd2,0)
> setup (hd0)
> quit

I then reboot, and my grub is working again. (NOTE:  Your steps and/or
drives will most likely be different.  You'll need to change the root
command to match where your Linux installation is located).  It's been a
while since I've had to do this because I've gone from doing full
re-installs to restores of the OS using Partimage from the same CD.

I'd suggest poking around on the rescue CD a bit to become comfortable with
it.  It's a nice package that I use pretty regularly for backups of my test
system.  I use Partimage to back my windows test system to another
partition, and restore it to the pre-test environment for later.

This is pretty brief.  If you are not comfortable with using the command
line, you might want to be some personal help with this project from someone
who is.


John Edwards



On Jan 1, 2008 11:10 AM, Michael TheZorch Haney <thezorch at gmail.com> wrote:

> Ok, I'm dumping Wubi!  I need advice on how to dual-boot my system
> between WinXP and Ubuntu 7.10 without loosing my current Windows
> partition.  Please help.  Thank you.
>
> --
> Michael "TheZorch" Haney
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