Re: Windows multiboot (aaargh!)
cr said:
> On Friday 19 September 2003 21:12, cr wrote:
>
> (DOS / Win95 / Win98 install)
>
>> Next step, see if I can boot the whole thing with GRUB....
>>
>> cr
>
> "Progress" report... :)
> The 'aaaargh' was prophetic....
>
> Well, it all booted happily with Grub while it was Drive 1 in my spare PC.
>
> So I put it in this box as /hdd, DOS would boot OK, but while I was
> faffing
> around with 'map' and 'hide' trying to make Windows behave consistently,
> *something* (whether me with Grub or Windows thinking it ought to be on
> Drive
> 1) went and munged /dev/hda5 where Debian lives. First I knew of it was
> 'kernel panic' when trying to boot Deb. I found that /hda1 ( /boot)
> was
> OK, but /hda5 (root) and /hda6 ( /swap) seemed to have got
> themselves lost in /hda2. And I *hadn't* backed up the mbr, nor did
> I
> have a record of the exact partition size....
>
> Soooooo... I got a spare drive, installed Debian on it intending to see
> if
> I could salvage the old /hda5 somehow, and in the midst of my usual battle
> to
> the death with dselect I came across a little utility called gpart which
> guesses partitions. And, it works! OK, relying on it is a bit like
> driving your car into a power pole to check if the seat belts work, but
> still, I'm damn grateful to its author.
>
> Conclusions:
>
> 1. Back up the MBR and everything else, first!
> 2. Be very, very careful when using 'map' to swap drives around
I've used 'map' without any damages, but Win* didn't want to finish
booting using it.
> 3. It's probably safest to let DOS/Windows occupy Drive 1, where in its
> blinkered arrogance it thinks it belongs. Linux can sit somewhere else.
...because it was written with open minds!
I second this plan, and strongly recommend people to use two drives when
possible if you're going to multi-boot w/ windows. That way WinDos can
play their games with the drive A's partition table, and Linux can sit on
a fdisk/cfdisk/whatever made partition table in drive B-ZZ99.
I've been through frustration like you've described more than once trying
to mix windows and linux on the same disk. That's not to say I don't do it
because in one computer I only have space for one IDE HD, but where I can
avoid it I do.
--
Jacob
Trying out SquirrelMail
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