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+--- Thread: Set up dual boot? (NB: Already have linux mint & windows xp installed on separate drives) (/thread-828.html)
Set up dual boot? (NB: Already have linux mint & windows xp installed on separate drives) - Dzinja - 2008-09-21
Apologies in advance for the misuse of language - I'm new to Linux (hence Mint!), but not computer shy. My problem is trying to make my machine dual boot.
I have taken the hard disc out of a linux box and put it into my windows box, (intel core2 at heart), so the windows drive is disk 0, and linux is on drive 1.
I can boot into linux using SuperGrubDisk, (or swapping discs round in bios settings), but can't get it to work with the windows boot loader. I think the problem is that linux (and grub) was installed when disk was hd0, and even when I load linux is convinced it is loaded in hd0, [/dev/hda2]. However windows report that the linux partition is hd1, (and supergrub reports it as hd1; /dev/hdb2).
I followed instructions from http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html (but already had grub installed) to make copy of boot section of linux disk on windows drive and point the windows bootloader at it, but no joy! Any ideas how to resolve this issue so that I can use the windows boot loader to load either XP or Mint?
(Sadly, not just me that uses the computer so need windows to be the default OS)
Any help much appreciated,
Dzinja
Set up dual boot? (NB: Already have linux mint & windows xp installed on separate drives) - hybrid - 2008-09-24
I'm not familiar with how to use the Windows boot loader to load Linux, so unfortunately I can't help there.
It is possible however to install GRUB on the first hard drive (despite Linux being on the second) and have it boot both Windows and Linux. If you have a specific reason for not wanting to put GRUB on that HD, this won't help, but if you just want a solution, installing GRUB on hd0 would work for booting both.
You would of course be able to set Windows as the default OS using GRUB on hd0.
The only potential pitfall is that it would be difficult to boot Windows if Linux is deleted (as the GRUB config file would not be found). In that case, you would have to use Windows to fixmbr first.