how do i daul boot redhat 8.0 with windows xp

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dual boot windows redhat

If windows is installed already, the install of Redhat 8.0 installs a boot loader where you can select which OS to start at bootup. Some things to know.
1) fips is the ONLY tool redhat 8.0 includes to resize a partition before you install the OS. (see documentation)
2) fips doesn't work with NTFS.
3) if fat32, then defrag, then run fips if you want to free up space on a single hard drive for the new OS.
4) if NTFS, you will need partition magic, although, you might have luck at the link below.

I was helping two colleages try to install on NTFS with the utilities at
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/help.html

and it appears that Bill is up to some new tricks. XP is installing some required utilities? spread outside the normal boot sector. I don't know the details, but the tools from above stated they could not re-partition because some XP files are outside and above 1024. I should ask for the explicit details since, it happened to both tof them, it will happen more and more. The bootom line and I am sure it is unintentional, it is getting hard to install Linux with XP.

I do THINK you can convertback to fat32, then all the problems go away, but don't have a clue. Linux is the only OS on my computer.

If installing on a second hard drive, piece of cake, leave the XP disk alone, install on the second disk.
RO

Getting? Got. If nikhil778's like me, you don't get proper OS disks with OEM XP and, even if you do get 'recovery disks', they'll just screw everything back up like it was. And defrag will leave files at the end of the partition so it can't be resized, even after repeated defraggings. And, as far as I know, FAT to NTFS is a one way street - XP won't convert NTFS back to FAT, though there may be some third-party utility I'm not familiar with that can manage it. FAT's not much of a problem and a second disk's not much of a problem, but it's extremely likely a single-partition NTFS XP setup is locked down. You'd have to blow off XP altogether or do without Linux, because even a temporary blowoff and an attempted reinstall would put you back at square one. But, yeah, hopefully it's FAT or already partitioned or not OEM or there's a second drive. Lot's of people do manage to dual-boot them. Once the drive is set, just install XP and install Red Hat.

Interesting what you say about them distributing parts of the OS around the disk - I was just wondering about that.

I was able to install W2k and Red Hat 8.0 on a dual boot PC with no major problems.

What you need to do for best case is use 2 Hard Drives, load Windows first on Hard Drive HDD0 then boot you PC with the Red Hat Linux CD in you CD Rom. The CD should bring up the Linux Setup, then you can partition your second Hard Drive HDD1. This will allow you to load the Boot loader as well for dual booting.

This way should work for WinXP as well

Larry

thanks
i will try it
has anyone of you installed Lindows on your machine

I've got WinXP running with Redhat and Mandrake all on one hard drive, though I installed mandrake first (after WinXP). Partition Magic 7.01 has no problem resizing NTFS partitions (with or without defrag), although I've never had to resize the WinXP partition, only other NTFS partitions.

I use Lilo, but I know ppl who have successfully used Grub.

Main points:
- install windoze first
- install redhat, being sure to choose Windoze as default OS. This is just to give you a way out in case something goes wrong. You can change this later.

If you used lilo to install the boot loader, then it created a backup of your original boot record. A simple 'man lilo' should tell you where to find it. I would keep copy (or 40) of this file somewhere, just in case.

Good luck,
Richard

yes i do