[SATLUG] Dual-Boot Machine

[Sean Carolan]

> > I usually format the harddrive blank, then I use Windows to
> > partition the drive, install windows and make sure it works.
>

After getting my home system configured and running nicely with
CentOS4, I decided to take another crack at setting up dual boot.
This time instead of using an existing partition on my hard drive, I
took Borries' suggestion above and used a spare hard drive,
disconnected the Linux drive and booted up Windows with only one
drive, on the primary IDE controller.  This time it got through the
install as before but would crash nearly every time I tried to boot it
up.

A bit more investigation revealed that the problem all along was that
it was missing the drivers for my nVidia chipset (which Linux had NO
problem installing out-of-the-box).  So I had to go to my wife's
computer, download the nVidia chipset and graphics drivers, burn them
on a CD, boot my computer into safe mode, load up the drivers, and
finally the computer would boot properly into Windows.

I can now say that all modern Linux distributions that I have used
have far surpassed Windows for ease of installation and use.  It was
fun to see the tables turned - back around 1999 when I first started
using Redhat it was the other way around!  I spent a week once
tinkering with the winmodem in my Toshiba laptop trying to get Redhat
7 to use it for dialup connections!

Now that I had set up a working Windows installation, I had to map the
drive in my grub.conf file so it would be tricked into thinking it was
on the primary drive, but once that was done it dual-booted with no
problems at all.

I'm glad I got to go through this experience because it forced me to
finally move all my day-to-day productivity software and data over to
Linux. Now I only have to boot into Windows for those few
graphics-intensive programs that won't run inside a virtual machine.
(Translation:  I like to play games!)

Thanks for all the suggestions, and if anyone else is going to try
double booting make sure that 1.  You install Windows and get it
working *first* and 2.  If you have nVidia (or other) special hardware
be sure to check that you have extra drivers for it because the
crippled XP installer doesn't come with some drivers out of the box!

thanks

Sean