Dual boot with WinXP, one physical disk on Promise RAID

Hi guys,

I have tried the hard disk install a few times with no success, I have a single 40GB hard disk on a Promise RAID controller built into my motherboard. I have WinXP on a 10GB NTFS partition, a 20GB FAT32 partition for files and then two ext3 partitions and a ext2 swap partition on the remaining space (this was done for me by Mandrake 9.1). Previously I had no problem dual booting WinXP and Mandrake (was done automatically by the mandrake installer).

I ran the knoppix-installer and let it write LILO to the MBR, it installed into the larger of the ext3 partitions. I didn't make a boot disk, and on resetting the computer couldn't boot either WinXP or Knoppix, just got half my screens filled by the character 9. I used a win2000 cd to fix the boot and mbr, allowing me to boot into winXP, but not knoppix.

I then repeated the knoppix install, this time telling it to write lilo to the root partition and make a boot floppy. This time I could boot into winXP (without the floppy) but not into knoppix (just got an error message saying that the floppy wasn't a boot disk).

I tried to use GAG, which can boot into winXP, but won't let me boot into Knoppix, just says that the partition isn't valid or something.

Please can someone help, I had trouble burning the CD on my CD writer (which is quite old) using Nero6 (got some error messages at the end and the disk wouldn't eject) but knoppix still boots from the CD (so I thought that the burn must have been successful anyway).

Could someone help please? I really like the look of knoppix, and wanted to install it because I wanted a debian OS, am I doing something wrong, or is it a problem with the CD (I have tried to burn it several time and always had the same problem).

Grateful thanks in anticipation of any help

Ceri

Hello, the problem you have could be because of the NTFS file system. I have Windows Me. Windows XP and Koppix in my computer and there is no problem because lilo is installed in the Me partition, and there I select Me or XP. I had some problems trying to start Xp from lilo, so you could make a small partition with Ms-DOS and then reinstall the MBR for XP selecting dual boot to MS-DOS and Xp and then, install knoppix (or reinstall lilo) and the MBR in the dos partition, it may run but you have to select your Xp two times.

Try, it's a little annoying but it works in mine. :?