[ltp] Drive Set-up on a TP760ED

[James Hawtin]

On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, JavaNick wrote:

> I've heard horror stories about dual-boot systems. Mainly I've heard that
> Windows does not like Linux being on the same drive, tries to save files to
> Linux partitions, etc. Before I install Suse 7.3, is there any truth to
> that? My system config BTW are: Thinkpad 760 ED 80RAM/3gb partitions(2) one
> for each OS.
> JavaNick
> I
> 

That sounds VERY like FUD to me. I have been using different dual or
triple boot systems, for a number of years and have had few problems.

1) Microsoft OSs don't like to play nice wiht anything else on the disk,
so install first. (not strictly fair, it like other OSs like to install
its version of a MBR (Master Boot record (as does linux)) its just windows
version is not able to boot other OSes.

2) Solaris 2 x86 uses the Same partition id and linux Swap. (No longer a
problem cos sun is withdrawing solaris 2 x86).

3) The disk manager under windows 2000 seems to think that linux lvm
drives (8e) are one of its own, and you have to tell it to ignore them, if
you don;t it will prompt you to format them all the time) Not a problem
for you cos your not going to use linux LVM ;-)

--------

A little word about How your computer boots, when your computer boots it
looks at the disk and loads the first sector on it, this is called the MBR
or master boot record. The default master boot record on machines looks
down a list of "partitions" maximum 4 and looks for the one that is
"active" it then jumps to the first sector of that partion and loads the
Boot Record, which is then used to to boot the OS.

And now you can see how the problems occur, If linux setups up lilo on the
MBR, then windows is installs it over writes the MBR hence linux does not
boot. 

This is really easy to fix,

a) Install windows first,

b) Install linux and tell it to install lilo on the BR of the partion not
the MBR of the disk. This has lots of advantages. If you then install
windows it will change the active partition to windows and overwrite the
MBR, WHo cares! just use dos fdisk to set the active partion back to linux
and your sorted.....

James



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