[ale] Dual boot setup

[Alex LeDonne]

On 11/12/06, Jim Popovitch <jimpop at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I've got a laptop with linux on 100% of the harddrive.  What I want to
> do is add a small Win2K install (dual boot, grub) for testing.  Does
> win2k need to be in the first partition?   Any other advice?
>
> -Jim P.

Jim,

Here's one person who claims success with a small /boot as the first
partition and Win on the second:
http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html
I've never tried it, as I've always been preserving existing windows
and adding linux. But I think grub and LILO can both do the
appropriate magic to fool NTLDR into thinking it's on the first
partition. Everything I've seen says that you want your Win partition
to start below the 1024-cylinder mark (8.1GB or so), but if your
hardware is new enough that may not matter.

While I've had the same experience as others who've replied in terms
of the MS installer borking your MBR, I've had great success with dd
if=/dev/hda of=/home/aledonne/linux.mbr bs=512 count=1 to back up the
good MBR, then a quick live CD boot and another dd to restore it. Then
edit the bootloader config to add windows and re-run lilo or enjoy the
grub goodness.

-Alex