HowTo: Newbie installation of DualBoot FC2 and WinXP

[PompeyBlue]

I'm a linux newbie, but have just managed to get FC2 installed and a working dual boot with win xp. There were a few gotchas a long the way, and I don't think the documentation is particularly newbie friendly. So I thought I'd just write up a quick guide on how I managed it.

Note that I was using NTL broadband here in the UK, via USB. I suppose this guide is more a compliment to the actual documentation, rather than a replacement.

1. Download your 4 discs of iso's and have your winxp disc at the ready

2. Backup anything on your system that you want to keep
2.1 Some posts used Partition Magic to resize existing partitions. I tried it and couldn't get it to do anything with my system (kept coming up with unable to lock drive) as well as a bunch of other stuff.

3. Go to your BIOS and ensure that the hard drive type is set to LBA (not auto). VERY important for dual booting, if you don't WinXP won't boot.
3.1 If you have changed from anything else to LBA then it's probably lost everything on your hd anyway, whether you resized with partiton magic or not. I couldn't get my machine to read the harddrive after setting it to LBA

4. Put the WinXP disc in and boot the installer
5. Ensure that you delete all partitions, and recreate new partitions. Leave space free for linux. On my 60G drive I partitioned 40G for windows and 20G for Linux. Make sure that WinXP is on the first partition

6. Install WinXP on your system by following the brain dead prompts.

7. Reboot the system and drop straight to WinXP, finalise the installation

8. Insert FC2 iso disc 1 and reboot the system
8.1 Press enter to install graphically

9. Let FC2 create it's own partitions, elect to delete all linux partitions on the system

10. When you get to GRUB you should see it decide something like:

Fedora
Other

rename Other to WinXP. I also set WinXP to default just because my partner uses it and trying to explain MBR boot loaders would be to much.

11. Complete installation of Linux (it's very easy to do, just follow the prompts). Ensure, that during the package installation, you install dhcp (or is it dhcpd)

12. Reboot the system and you should see GRUB come up with the choice of 2 os's. You should be able to boot both

13. Get your NTL USB modem to work under linux by logging in.
13.1 type "su root" and enter the root password
13.2 Go to /etc
13.3 emacs dhcpd.conf
13.4 type in the following line "ddns-update-style interim"
13.5 Save the file
13.6 reboot system
13.7 Go to network wizard, select ethernet and you should see "usbethernet" or something similar, select this, and dhcp for IP etc
13.8 Activate device

You should now have FC2 installed with working inet, as well as booting XP. Here's just a quick trouble shooter based on what I found:

TS1 When I try and boot WinXP I get the following on the screen and then it freezes:

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

A. I got that before I set my hd to LBA, this seemed to fix it. Although some posts claim they managed to install it fine without setting harddrives to LBA

TS2 My internet seems very slow, it takes ages to load in new pages

A. Yeah, I got that this morning too, last night seemed fine, haven't had a chance to check it on WinXP I think it's the actual connection though....

TS3 When I start up that "chromium" game it runs at like 0.5 fps
A. Yeah, I get that too, not sure how I'm meant to fix it, wonder if it's not hardware accelerated or something ?!?!?

Anyway, hope it helps, I was a complete newbie with the documentation (which is pretty good) and managed to get Linux installed.

Now if only I could work out how to create new user accounts

[ghenry]

/usr/sbin/adduser username as root.

[ghaefb]

Or you can run: system-config-users to add users.
And yes your graphic card is not hardware accelerateed.

[digitalsuperman]

i already have xp and mdk 10.0 on my pc..
im planning to install fedora..
will your installation guide would still work??
im planning to remove my mdk and replace it with fedora..

it should work. also, if i recall, during partition setup it ask you if you want to remove all linux partition, all partitions, or just use free space. choose the remove linux partitions and it should remove onely mandrake, but it might be best to manually partition.

[imdeemvp]

how about using one of my links for this......but very good pompeyblue

[btfans]

can try bootpart 2.5 if need to create into boot.ini

[MadMesh]

Will your guide work for a Win2K Fedora core 2 dualboot? Is it save to change a harddisk's LBA settings on an existing Win2K partition because I dont want to reinstall Win2K. I already have an empty partion that is located on the same physical HD as the Win2K partition.

[imdeemvp]

Originally Posted by MadMesh

Will your guide work for a Win2K Fedora core 2 dualboot? Is it save to change a harddisk's LBA settings on an existing Win2K partition because I dont want to reinstall Win2K. I already have an empty partion that is located on the same physical HD as the Win2K partition.

it should since both are ntfs partitions....i have w2k and fc1 on one pc.....you can also check out the links i have below my signature so you can have a better understanding of the installation.......read until you can understand it cleary its a very good guide.

[mddubs]

During step 10 of Fedora's installation that you've mentioned above, I forgot to rename Other to WinXP and I'd like to do that now. How can I do that without uninstalling?

[imdeemvp]

Originally Posted by mddubs

During step 10 of Fedora's installation that you've mentioned above, I forgot to rename Other to WinXP and I'd like to do that now. How can I do that without uninstalling?

open terminal and become root and this is how:

[imdeemvp@imdeemvp imdeemvp]$ su
Password: <- root password
[root@imdeemvp imdeemvp]# gedit /etc/grub.conf <-this will open grub.conf file

one the windows opens you will see the titles so UNDER DOS change to whataever you wanna name windoz....f.e. W2K or WinXP

[mddubs]

Can the same thing be done graphically? I'm very new to the Linux interface and hardly know any text commands. Also I'm not on my machine right now, but I assume there's a icon called Terminal in menu to get to the terminal?

[imdeemvp]

isnot hard to do just give a try as i described from the post just copy and paste the line i provided to edit the grub.....

and yes it can be done in graphical mode but you need to download the graphical bootloader for fc 2 using the terminal too

as root: yum install bootloader-gui you will need to have your yum.conf setup and that anouther terminal process

the terminal in located and >system setting >terminal

[mddubs]

Thanx, you've been a lot of help. One more thing: I installed XP first, and partitioned 20 gig for it in NTFS. I left all my other free space blank, or raw. XP works fine. When I install Fedora, during the partition setup, I get an unusual warning about some other partition program did something incorrectly and I can choose to ignore it but it may cause future (fixable) problems. What happened? How can I fix it? Should I start over using some third-party partition software?

Also, I'm going to have my media on a seperate harddrive, which I would like both Windows and FC to have access too. I'd like to use NTFS, but will this be a problem for Fedora?

[imdeemvp]

before you install fc2 enter the bios and in the hd sections CHANGE AUTO TO LBA, just to make sure everything will be ok, now dont worry about the message just ignore and let fc2 use your free space.