trying to dual boot my xp and knoppix, but...

i am trying to dual boot my xp system without messing it up. amd xp 2800, 512 mb ram, 160 gb hd. xp installed in hda1 ntfs, hda2 is a fat32 i use for music files, hda3 is where i keep installing knoppix, hda4 is swap. all are primary. i first tried to use ntldr to boot xp and knoppix...did not work. i then tried to use gag boot disk. it wont boot knoppix from hda3.

i would like step by step commands as if i popped in cd and booted knoppix.
is it better to type knoppix single in first boot menu and run knoppix-installer or something else?
should i keep my four partitions as primary, or should i do something else like extended partitions?

i have been hunting for something that will work. i have been reading the boards for a while and nothing seems to work. i would prefer to use ntloader, but a single boot disk or gag is ok too.

btw, i got everything to work on my laptop, i used only knoppix, not a dual boot setup.

thanks

Quote:

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Originally Posted by simmons71

i am trying to dual boot my xp system without messing it up....

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Two great dual boot programs are Smart Boot Manager and XOSL. I can't promise anything with XP (who ever can?) and I have not used these programs with XP SP2. But take reasonable caution and I think you'll like them. By the way, I have never sen reports of Xp problems with these programs, although I have seen several Xp problems reported after trying to install Knoppix to hd.

SBM is smaller. It can be installed to the MBR or to a boot floppy. So you could make a floppy and see if it did what you needed before installing to the MBR.

XOSL is larger and more feature rich. It has a nicer looking interface. It will not install completely to just the MBR. The XOSL documentation suggests installing it to the Windows partition, but I much prefer it give it it's own small partition (that way I can reload backup copies of Windows in the windows partition without changing XOSL). I do like XOSL more, but either should work for you.

THANKS. i will give it a shot. :D

i tried sbm...i think the problem has to do with lilo.conf. it does not seem to get inserted into the partition, which is what i am trying to do. or the configuration is not quite right.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by simmons71

i am trying to dual boot my xp system without messing it up. amd xp 2800, 512 mb ram, 160 gb hd. xp installed in hda1 ntfs, hda2 is a fat32 i use for music files, hda3 is where i keep installing knoppix, hda4 is swap. all are primary. i first tried to use ntldr to boot xp and knoppix...did not work. i then tried to use gag boot disk. it wont boot knoppix from hda3.

i would like step by step commands as if i popped in cd and booted knoppix.
is it better to type knoppix single in first boot menu and run knoppix-installer or something else?
should i keep my four partitions as primary, or should i do something else like extended partitions?

i have been hunting for something that will work. i have been reading the boards for a while and nothing seems to work. i would prefer to use ntloader, but a single boot disk or gag is ok too.

btw, i got everything to work on my laptop, i used only knoppix, not a dual boot setup.

thanks

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Step-by-step:
1. Insert CD
2. Boot with bootcode 'knoppix lang=us' (assuming you want an english system. Don't use too many bootcodes, knoppix adds them into lilo.conf & sometimes there can be problmes with repeated commands).
3. Open a terminal
4. Type 'sudo knoppix-installer'
5. Configure as desired & let it install.

Knoppix doesn't care about primary/extended partitions. In fact windows doesn't either anymore, the extended partition system is a carryover from the DOS era when there was a limit to the HD size the system could handle.
Regarding bootloader, have you seen this thread: http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9710

WORKED GREAT. i then had a problem with everything in german...but got append= added to lilo with "lang=us" :D . everything is great. thanks for your help.

I'm trying to do something similar. I have 2 hard disks. The Master has 1 NTFS partition with Windows XP (that's how it came). I added a second hard disk, which now has 3 partitions:

1) FAT32
2) linux-swap
3) ext3

I installed Knoppix to the 3rd partition on the second disk, but I don't know how to get the bootloader to work. All the files are there I just can't boot to it. I'd rather NOT do anything to the existing NTFS partition. I was trying to figure out how to get it to work with NTLoader, but no luck.

Any suggestions?

P.S. I don't have a floppy drive

doing:

dd if=/dev/hdb3 of=/bootsect.knx bs=512 count=1

and copying the output file to c:\ and adding it to boot.ini causes the following error when I select it from NTLoader:

Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:
<Windows Root>\system32\ntoskrnl.exe
Please reinstall a copy of the above file.

You're on the right track. But you simply can't add that file to the Boot.ini menu.

You need to get a loader called BootPart from www.winimage.com.

BootPart is the utility that Corel Linux used for it's customers who wanted to dual boot with XP (before Xandros took it over).

It is very easy to configure. Run Bootpart to determine what the Linux code number of the Linux partition is on your second drive.

Then, plug that number into the command line for Bootpart and it will automagically put the right entry into Boot.ini

sakiZ