dual booting XP and Linux

[Mike McCarty]

Robert Nichols wrote:
> Les Mikesell wrote:
> 
>> Has anyone actually had trouble with fedora's automatic
>> dual boot setup on an existing windows box since that
>> size computation bug in FC2 days?
> 
> 
> None whatsoever for me with FC-5 on hdb and Windows XP on hda.
> The machine is an HP-Compaq EVO, with GRUB installed in the
> MBR of hda.  The difference might be that my machine doesn't
> have any of the Compaq recovery software on it.  It was a used
> machine purchased with a fresh install of Win XP Pro on a disk
> that had been wiped clean.

The Compaq recovery software makes a significant difference, in
my experience. I have a Presario with that, and it seems not to
like changes to the MBR code. I say this because my problems went
away after rewriting the MBR code. I verified that the partition
table information was not changed. I lived for several weeks unable to
boot WinXP, and then finally gave in and "fixed" the MBR, which
left me without GRUB and unable to boot Linux. I had fixed up
a bootable GRUB floppy, and got Linux to boot from that. Then I
installed GRUB on the partition, lifted it, and let the WinXP boot
manager load GRUB, and all was well. The WinXP boot manager actually
does a pretty decent job. It would be nicer, though, if I only
had one boot manager involved in boot. I set the timeout for
the default boot of GRUB (labelled "Linux") to just a few seconds.
I rarely boot Windows.

Mike
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