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Re: Dual Boot With Win XP - Debian First?



russ421@aol.com wrote:
Thanks for the advice so far. So the only issue that will arise is the bootloader will appear to disappear? Once that is fixed, everything will be working correctly?
Yes. The only thing you have to worry is that you install Windows on the first partition of the first disc and that it doesn't install itself over the whole disc (I think that HomeEdition does this). I've done it many times and Debian was always there, when I fixed the mess left by Windows.
I'm still new to a lot of this computer / linux stuff. Where is the bootloader anyways? What's the issue with simply going into bios and disabling the hard disk that windows sits on and setting the linux as primary drive? Would that still not let you boot into Linux?
I'm not an expert, but as far as I know BIOS is dealing with hardware ( in this case hard disc as a whole) and not with partitions on that disc, so BIOS won't help.

What windows does during the install is overwrite the MBR and thus deleting the reference to Linux bootloader. What you have to do is to overwrite the MBR again and insert the reference to Windows into GRUB configuration.

regards
Mitja



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