XP / Knoppix hybrid: How to reinstall XP?

[Josh83]

ok, i tried now the version with xosl... but unfortunately i can not install it.

i have my completely new notebook, and i started it with knoppix to format the whole harddisk... i created a fat16 partition of 100mb where i'd like to install xosl...

i start with windows 98 cd to dos mode.

i start the xosl install.exe from a cd that i burnt before.

i tried to install it to a dedicated partition and to a dos drive (i selected both time the 100mb fat16 partition).

but when i hit install it told me that an error occured! on the right it tells me that it tried to create a file and that this action failed...

i have no idea what i've done wrong... any idea? thanks a lot!

josh

[Harry Kuhman]

but when i hit install it told me that an error occured! on the right it tells me that it tried to create a file and that this action failed...

i have no idea what i've done wrong... any idea? thanks a lot!

I'm not clear on what your error is or how you got it. It's been a while since I've installed XOSL and talked others through it; I had no problems at all, a friend created a problem for himself in the floppy making step when the instructions called for a completely empty formatted floppy and he decided that he could/should use a bootable ormatted floppy with DOS on it. When he finally admitted he was doing that the problems went away.

I'm not sure about your Win98 DOS mode. When I installed XOSL I booted a DOS floppy and when from there. That might be your problem, but I can't say for sure. You should be able to format a bootable floppy in Win98 and ue that.

[Josh83]

ok i got it now... it did not succeed when i started xosl right from the cd! now i reformatted the 100mb hd with fat16, started with the win98 cd rom to dos mode, copied all the install files to c: and run install.exe . it works well now.

now i've got another question about partitioning (if i'm allowed )...
i wanna have the following partitions (don't care much about the sizes and what they are meant for):

- 100mb boot partition (fat16, hidden for all osses)
- windows xp pro (ntfs, hidden to all linuxes) 8gb
- windows 98 (fat32, hidden to all linuxes) 1gb
- programs for windows xp (fat32, hidden to windows 9 20gb
- programs for windows 98 (fat32, hidden to windows xp pro) 4gb
- multimedia and other files for all osses (fat32) 20gb
- knoppix swap (hidden to windows) 1gb
- knoppix hd installation os (hidden to windows and other linuxes) 5gb
- ubuntu os (hidden to windows and other linuxes) 5gb

my question is now: how do i have to create this partitions? i can only have 3 primary as far as i know, so how should i divide my harddisk? which partitions should be primary, and which should be part of the extended partition?

thank you very much for info.
josh

[Harry Kuhman]

Glad you got it working. As to the partitions, you can have up to 4 real partitions on the hard drive. One can be an extended partition that contains additional logical partitions (there is a limit on how many logical partitions go in an extended partition, I forget what it is. You might be able to exceed this limit somewhat by having multiple extended partitions, I'm not sure, have never tried that.) People wanting as many partitions as you often install extra hard drives. There are some "tricks" for having more than 4 real partitions on a hard drive but I would avoid them as most software does not know about them and some software (disk defragmenters and the like) might be confused by the stuff and overwrite data. I believe that both 98 and even xp can run from logical partitions, but the MS installers don't like to install them there. The best approaches to this are to either leave them on primary partitions or install them on primary partitions and then copy them to extended partitions with tools like Norton's Ghost. As far as I know any Linux can boot from a logical partition. I think the small XOSL partition can be on a logical partition on the extended partition as well, but I've not done this. I would think you might want to put XP and 98 on physical partitions and see how many logical partitions you can get, then start planning your other partitions.

[Josh83]

thank you very much for your info. i'm gonna try that.