Dual boot with Win 2000 Pro & Linux 7.1

I think the following guide will be useful for you:
http://www.tweak3d.net/articles/multibootlinux/

I've done dual and triple boot setups with various combinations of NT, 98, ME, RH7 Linux, Suse 6.1 Linux, and Solaris 7.

The first piece of advice I'd give is get System Command and Partition Magic or Partition Commander. Partition Commander comes with System Commander "Personal Edition". This isn't what you want - pony up for the full version.

Next, I'd advise you to plan your partitions such that for each OS you have a one gig boot partition in the first 8 gig of disk.

Finally, I'dadvise you to install Windows 2000 first and Linux 7.1 second. If you don't use System Commander as your boot manager, use Lilo.

If you need more details, ask. A step-by-step would be a very lengthy document.

Jay Eckles
www.jayeckles.com

I just recently built a system that has windows 2000 and red hat 7.1. Here is what I did:

-Boot the machine using the Linux install CD.
-There will be an option to use Disk Druid or fdisk to partition the drive, choose fdisk (fdisk in Linux is similar to the dos utility, but more advanced).
-Delete any current partitions(read the help for how to use the commands).
-Use fdisk to put a small (request 16 MB - it will make a partition of 22 MB) Linux native partition at the begining of the drive. Reason: the BIOS of some machines can not boot from any sector of a hard drive past 1023.
-Write this partition to the disk (you will use the partition later for the /boot partition of linux).
-Don't go any further into the install program, reboot the machine.
-Insert the Windows 2000 disk and boot from that.
-Windows 2000 install will see the small partition as unknown. Create the partition that you want to install Windows on (best to make it the partition after the small partition) and any other partition that you want to be NTFS.
-Install Windows on the partition you just created formatting it NTFS.
-Once Windows is installed, boot the computer using the Linux disks and create the remaining partitions(usually /root and )needed for Linux. Assign the 16 MB partition to be /boot.
-Later in the install, specify that LILO be installed to the first sector of /boot !!NOT THE MBR!!.
-That is it for the Linux install. You won't be able to get to Linux without aboot disk until you read the following article. Steps 5-7 are the most important in this case. http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Linux+NT-Loader.html

If you have left over space, you can create a FAT32 partition that Linux and Windows can both see.

I have a Western Digital 40GB 7200RPM ATA-100 drive and it worked great for me.

Hope this helps. Let me know if you need any more info. Good luck.

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