Gusty-Feisty-windows

[Liam Proven]

On 03/10/2007, Bruce Marshall <bmarsh at bmarsh.com> wrote:

> You can have as many linux systems as you want without it taking a lot of
> work.   I've never tried for more than one Windows installation on a machine
> because of Windows needs to be on the first active partition.   That may have
> changed but I don't keep up with Windows changes.

That hasn't been the case since about Windows 2, if then, so not for
about 20 years. How long have you been out of touch? :¬)

MS-DOS and the Windows /boot loader/ expect to be in the MBR and the
boot sector of the 1st primary partition. It doesn't need to be but
that's what it expects.

Windows itself will run from any partition on any drive that the BIOS
and the bootloader can see. This is true of Win3, Win9x, WinNT/2K/XP.

My normal base multiboot install is:

[C: 32-2047MB primary FAT16 - bootable with MS-DOS for emergencies,
BIOS flash &c]
[Extended partition]
 |_ [logical FAT32 D: \Windows
 |_ [logical Linux root
 |_ [logical Linux home
 |_ [logical FAT32 shared data
 |_ [logical Linux swap]

Keeping C: as a FAT16 volume makes like easy. /Everything/ can read
that. You can put the Windows pagefile in there to reduce
fragmentation of the Windows system drive.

For an easy life, install Windows first, /then/ install Linux, and
LILO or GRUB will be installed in the MBR and the installer puts in an
entry or entries for Windows for you.


-- 
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