Installation overwrote windows installation too easily

[Derek Broughton]

Ken McLennan wrote:

> G'day there One & All,
> 
>>     Alas there is no software I am aware of that can tell the difference
>> between Windows and any other data on a Hard Drive.
>>   
> 
>     It doesn't have to determine any differences, nor to find what OSes
> are installed anywhere. 

In any case, the installer _can_ detect other OS's, and does.  If you
install into a partition, and there are other partitions on the primary
drive (I don't know if it can handle secondary drives) with an OS on them,
it will try to build the grub menu with the appropriate boot stanzas.

It's not hard to identify OS's - if it's on NTFS or FAT, it is probably
going to be Windows, so you look for any file that identifies it as a
bootable partition; otherwise if it has a vmlinuz file in the root, it's a
form of Linux.  It's not so hard to identify what OS is on a partition, so
much as to decide just how many OS's you try to identify.

> It needs to halt the process, offer a dialog 
> with an explicit warning to the user about what will happen and giving
> them an opportunity to back out just in case they DO have windows (or
> Solaris, or Fedora, or Mandriva, any other OS) installed. It doesn't
> matter whether they do or not, but should provide the warning for a
> worst case scenario.
> 
>     I doubt it would be difficult, just a dialog with a "Cancel &
> Return" option and a "Go Ahead and Nuke" option.


???  I got those options.  
-- 
derek