Fedora and window Xp dual boot
David Liguori
liguorid at albany.edu
Thu Dec 9 19:15:20 UTC 2010
On 12/9/2010 12:06 PM, Shelby, James wrote:
>
> You should be able to modify the boot.ini on your Windows Drive and
> add the Fedora bootloader. This wasn’t too difficult but I needed to
> do a dd if=/dev/sdb of=linux.bin bs=512 count=1
>
> Then copy that bin file over to my windows system.
>
> With the way Windows seems to not like Linux taking over the
> bootloader I still use grub on my windows system with the
> understanding that it could very well one day not boot windows.
>
>
I have never, ever, had that happen. I've never tried booting Linux from
the Windows bootloader, but Grub is probably more reliable. If you do
use the NT Loader you would need to have Grub installed on the first
sector of the Linux boot partition, which is one of the two options
during install, and is not the default.
One could also use a third-party (non-free) loader like Boot Magic or
System Commander neither of which is released or supported today. The
only commercial boot loader that is, to my knowledge, is Acronis Disk
Director, which I tried once and didn't like.
Stick with the open-source solution (Grub) and not only will you be
supporting the OSS cause (some people claim the boot loader is the
central piece of the Linux system) but you'll have a better product.
I find the documentation for installing Grub from scratch long and
confusing. It's probably simpler just to reinstall Fedora. Go ahead and
put it on the second HD but make sure the boot loader is selected to
install on the MBR of the first disk, which is always the default.
This all assumes you install Windows first, Fedora second. I've never
tried the other way around but expect it would be difficult.
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