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dual boot -WINNT and LINUX

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by hoayfern

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I am Hoay fern and wish to ask about dual boot.

Currently we have LINUX operating system installed in Compaq Prosignia 300 with tape drive, so we wish to use it as WINNT backup.

So we need to install WINNT in Compaq Prosignia 300 with existing LINUX operating System.
May I ask :
1)How can I found what whether we have enough hardisk space or not ? I mean what are the commands.

2)How can we create dual boot with existing LINUX Operating System?

Please assists

hoay fern (hoayfern.lee@duraco.com.sg)

10 replies

by shanghai sam

You should go through this 4 step process

1. make a linux boot floppy (use the mkbootdisk command)
2. Install Windows NT/2K. NT/2K will overwrite the MBR... here is where you will value the Linux Boot Floppy that you created at step 1
3. Boot into Linux using the Linux Boot floppy
4. You have an option now
- Dual boot using NT Loader
- Dual boot using Linux Loader
All the info you need is at
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Linux+NT-Loader.html

by ppuru

You should go through this 4 step process

1. make a linux boot floppy (use the mkbootdisk command)
2. Install Windows NT/2K. NT/2K will overwrite the MBR... here is where you will value the Linux Boot Floppy that you created at step 1
3. Boot into Linux using the Linux Boot floppy
4. You have an option now
- Dual boot using NT Loader
- Dual boot using Linux Loader
All the info you need is at
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/mini/Linux+NT-Loader.html

by joe prochazka

if your looking to set up Windows just to back up say another windows machine you may want to look into a tape back up software package for linux called AMANDA http://www.amanda.org nice thing about Amanda you can back up both windows and linux machines over the network and not have to worry about dual booting.

by lintadsl

In Linux,
You can type df -h at root(/) location.
It will tell you how much free space you have. If linux partition uses all space of your hard drive, you may delete a partition to install Win NT.

Start up Linux box with DOS start-up disk(or win98 start-up disk), go to fdisk and make sure you have free space to install and get the partition with FAT or FAT32.
Now, you are ready to install NT.
When machine boot up, if you see Loader:
press TAB, you will have an option for Linux or dos, you can type dos and it will boot up NT for you.

Good Luck.

by orodriguez

I can give all of the steps you need to make this work smoothly and painless. But first I need to know what distribution of Linux you're running, and whether you're running X or text based.
By all means don't you fdisk your hard drive, you can always use diskdruid (DiskDrake if running Mandrake)and make sure you do make that Linux bootable diskette as well as an NT boot disk.

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