Please assist me in Linux Installation.

[Drum Thumper]

At first I was going to say yeah, but correct me if I'm wrong here--the MBR resides on the primary HD, and since that's the chunk of code that takes control from the BIOS, would both OS's have to be on the primary?

OR

Would a Boot Manager such as System Commander be able to handle having two (or more) OS's on multiple hard drives?

I thought this would be covered in the COMPTIA A+ Certification guide, but I'm not finding it...

[SgtM]

It might be on the A+ for windows. I've done windows dual boots before.. piece of cake. I've never done a win/linux install though.

[Airbozo]

Sorry to revive such an old thread, but what about a dual boot with separate hdd's? Would the install be the same?

The install would be the same, except make sure to choose the correct HD.

As for any worries about the MBR, it only needs to be on the primary boot drive, even if you are doing a dual boot with different HD's, since the bios will transfer execution to the primary drive and the bootloader will direct the system to boot from either drive. Until recently I _always_ used a different drive for each OS and was even able to boot 4 different OS's.

Oh and for fixing the MBR (in case it gets dorked) you would use the following command from a dos prompt (or command prompt);

fdisk /mbr

This will "repair" a broken MBR on the _FIRST_ drive. Please use with caution! and do NOT use it on a good drive with an older boot floppy. This is why I make boot floppies from all of my OS's. I have a win3.11, win95, win98, winxpsp2, WinNT(3.5 I think), and of course my rescue disks from linux. I have used the win95 and win98 boot disks alot, but never the winXP ones (yet). You may never need them, but are a lifesaver if you do...

[Drum Thumper]

As for any worries about the MBR, it only needs to be on the primary boot drive, even if you are doing a dual boot with different HD's, since the bios will transfer execution to the primary drive and the bootloader will direct the system to boot from either drive.

That's what I thought. Was going to test it out later this week, but thanks for the info!

I have a win3.11, win95, win98, winxpsp2, WinNT(3.5 I think), and of course my rescue disks from linux. I have used the win95 and win98 boot disks alot, but never the winXP ones (yet). You may never need them, but are a lifesaver if you do...

Good advice too! ALWAYS have boot disks handy, cause you never know when something is gonna get 'dorked'. I learned the hard way in high school about backups and whatnot. Not something I ever wish to happen to me again.

Nothing worse than pulling an all nighter cause windows decided to BSoD you as you hit the print button on your English Final and you didn't save it once.

Now before you say 'noob, why didn't you have autosave turned on' let me state that this happened to me in 1992 in MS Works--no autosave.

Good news is, I got an A+ on that final.

[Drew]

****it. this is the third time I've tried to write this post. New ****ing keyboard and I keep presssing Ctrl instead of shift. What a ****in N00b.

If it dont work this time, I'm going back to bed.

Right.

I tried Ubuntu about a year ago, and binned it because I couldn't get my ethernet card to work.

But I found this yesterday.....

http://consumer.hardocp.com/article....xoY29uc3VtZXI=

and it kinda gave me a hard-on to have another go (I like to be different and maybe I'll get a performance boost over using XP on the Uber-rig).

I'll re-post here if anything terrible or great happens, and I'm also on the ubuntuforums as Drew555..

Coupla questions for you clever buggers.....

Live CD seemed slow..because it's runnin off the CD? Because it's all in RAM?

Be faster on the HDD?

Any performance gains over XP?

The live CD was version 5.10, I've ordered 6.06 (Dapper Drake...gotta love the naming scheme they got going on...). reckon it's worth downloading the latest (Ver. 6.10)? Whats the benefit of the LTS (Long Term Support) version?

A forum's gotta be the best support in the world...

No doubt I'll have more questions in the future.

Peace out dudes.

[Drum Thumper]

Coupla questions for you clever buggers.....

Live CD seemed slow..because it's runnin off the CD? Because it's all in RAM?

Yep. Most the add on programs (openoffice, frozen bubble, etc) still reside on the disc. And DVD or CDROM drives will always be slower than hard drives due to the way that they store and retrieve information.

Be faster on the HDD?

You'll see a huge increase in response time if you install to a hard drive.

Any performance gains over XP?

I'll leave this to the *nux experts.

The live CD was version 5.10, I've ordered 6.06 (Dapper Drake...gotta love the naming scheme they got going on...). reckon it's worth downloading the latest (Ver. 6.10)? Whats the benefit of the LTS (Long Term Support) version?

I was wondering the same--time to do some reading!

Hope this Helps.

[Drew]

It's all gone horribly wrong

My own fault really, but I need a bit of help.

Right.

I downloaded the latest version and burnt the iso image to a cd-r. So far so good. but something went wrong... I got an 'I/O error reading the CD'. So I've obviously made a spoon of the burn. Never mind, I'll use the 5.10 version I've had for a year.

Oh no you wont. It was all going well, went past the 'erase everything' bit, then it all went a bit pete tong. While it was installing the base components, there was one (can't remember which) that wouldn't install properly and kept booting me back to a menu to pick which bits to do next.

So now I've got a PC that wont install Ubuntu 5.10.. Never mind, I'll reinstall Windows and wait until the Ubuntu 6.06 disks come in the post.

Oh no you wont.

Every time I boot from the XP disk, it goes through all the lovely blue loading screens, and then BSoDs on me, citing 'aproblem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer - IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL'.

What a bitch.

Now I can't install Ubuntu, can't install XP and am stuck using live versions of Ubunto or Knoppix. I can't re-burn Ubuntu 6.10 because the drive I wanna use to burn is being used to run the O/S and I wanna throw it all out of the window

I'm kinda hoping that someone has an idea so that I can get Ubuntu 610 re-burnt and installed.

I was thinking of maybe a mini O/S that I can install off of a 256Mb USB drive? Then while the O/S runs off that, I could use the CD drive to re-burn Ubuntu.

Hope some of this makes sense... I'm very tired...

[Airbozo]

Try reseting the bios values to default and try windows again. And/or Ubuntu...

[Drew]

I'll be back.










I hope....







If you never here from me again, send help.

[Drum Thumper]

Every time I boot from the XP disk, it goes through all the lovely blue loading screens, and then BSoDs on me, citing 'aproblem has been detected and windows has been shut down to prevent damage to your computer - IRQ NOT LESS OR EQUAL'.

What a bitch.

This is almost always caused by faulty drivers. When you were installing XP, did you get the 'unsigned driver' window?

This could be caused by any number of items you've got installed (Modem, NIC, video, sound, etc).

What all do you have in your pci slots?

Edit: Also check to make sure that all your cables are securely connected. Could be something as simple as a loose cable.