Dual boot setup - please help

  • Thread starter Thread starter DK
  • Start date Start date
D

DK

Please give suggestions on how to best handle
dual booting in this case:

- Two Drives. Both contain primary partitions
(Drive1 NTFS and Drive2 Ext3).

- Drive1 has WinXP installed and configured.

- I want to install CentOS and would like to be able
to boot to it.

- Preferably, if things go wrong with Linux, I should
be able to simply delete the partition to which the OS
is installed - *without any effects* on WInXP.

- Changing boot sequence in BIOS is an ugly option
which I am trying to avoid.

Thank you!

Dima
 
Please give suggestions on how to best handle
dual booting in this case:

- Two Drives. Both contain primary partitions
(Drive1 NTFS and Drive2 Ext3).

- Drive1 has WinXP installed and configured.

- I want to install CentOS and would like to be able
to boot to it.

- Preferably, if  things go wrong with Linux, I should
be able to simply delete the partition to which the OS
is installed - *without any effects* on WInXP.

- Changing boot sequence in BIOS is an ugly option
which I am trying to avoid.

Thank you!

Dima
Click to expand...

I've not done this, and am guessing a bit here... presumably a boot
loader like grub on a tiny 3rd partition would do the trick. BOIS
would be set to boot from that grubbed partition.


NT
 
Please give suggestions on how to best handle
dual booting in this case:

- Two Drives. Both contain primary partitions
(Drive1 NTFS and Drive2 Ext3).

- Drive1 has WinXP installed and configured.

- I want to install CentOS and would like to be able
to boot to it.

- Preferably, if things go wrong with Linux, I should
be able to simply delete the partition to which the OS
is installed - *without any effects* on WInXP.

- Changing boot sequence in BIOS is an ugly option
which I am trying to avoid.

Thank you!

Dima
Click to expand...

I've PM on one machine (some really old crap on this) -- use them for
simplified, core binary OS installs (referenced to other drive
extensions where a bulk of add-ons go). Pretty much among the best as
far as freeware alternatives go for an arbitrator. XOSL -- not really
sure what that's all about, possibly a more formal treatment of
available OS flavors.

For what I need, though, PM works well.

I usually hide anything relating to one OS partition from another
being installed, and come back later gradually to test how they
interact together across shared resources. Having that binary sector-
to-sector copy is an advantage in case one doesn't like what the
other's doing. Then again, I don't like what WIN & friends is trying
to do to itself half the time, either, so the same principle applies
(along with various system monitor alerts, registry watchers, etc).

http://www.ranish.com/part/
 
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