Dual boot with windows 2000 professional

[Senthilkumaran.T]

Hi,

I have installed windows 2000 professional on my PC then I installed Linux 7.0 sucessfully. When I reboot the PC, it always boot to Win2K. How I can make it to dual boot options?

Thanks for your help in advance.

[Miguel Rodriguez_3]

When you are installing linux, in the Lilo Section, specify your Linux-root-partition as your boot device because the Master Boot Record (MBR) of your harddisk is owned by Windows 2000.

If you have an IDE harddisk and your Linux partition is the second partition, the boot partition for Lilo is /dev/hda2.

If you have two disks and your Linux resides on the first partition of your second disk, the boot partition for Lilo is /dev/hdb1.

You must specify that you want a boot diskette at the installation, so you can boot from Linux the first time.

Now you have to peel the bootsector from your Linux-root-Partition. With /dev/hda2 as your linux-partition, the dd-command is:

# dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/bootsect.lnx bs=512 count=1

There is something wrong if your bootsect.lnx has more than 512 bytes.

Now copy the file bootsect.lnx to a DOS-formated floppy if this is your way to transfer files to the NTFS-Windows-partition.

You can copy it with

# mcopy /bootsect.lnx a:

or with

# mount -t msdos /dev/fd0 /mnt
# copy /bootsect.lnx /mnt
# umount /mnt

Remember to usa a DOS formated diskette.

Now, reboot the PC and boot with Windows 2000 normally.

Copy the file from the diskette to C:\bootsect.lnx. I don't tell you how to do that.

Remove the, system- and the read-only-attribute of the boot.ini file before you can modify it with:


C:\attrib -s -r c:\boot.ini

Now change the file boot.ini with an editor, notepad for example, as follows:


[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows 2000 Server" /fastdetect
c:\bootsect.lnx="Linux"

Only the last line has been added in this example. Restore the attributes after you have saved boot.ini with:

C:\attrib +s +r c:\boot.ini

After a shutdown of your Windows 2000 and a restart your should see the following:


OS Loader V4.00

Please select the operating system to start:

Windows 2000 Professional
Linux

Select Linux and see

LILO loading zImage ....

[jason d hasinsky]

Please go to and follow the information found on this link. This is one way that i managed to get the Linux and 2000 professional on my laptop to function properly. The easier way is to just add the windows portion of the script to lilo and use that to boot into windows. But if you like to use the MBR and boot into windows as the default option this is a most helpful link. The problem that i ran into that no one explained was making sure when you copy the boot from Linux to add to the Microsoft MBR you must mount the disk as msdos for it to work took me a couple of days to figure that out that is why i'm referencing this link follow exactly and you'll fly through it. http://www.littlewhitedog.com/reviews_other_00011.asp Another handy trick for laptops is how to change all of your linux network settings from work home internal network etc... here is a wonderful script to automate that process. http://www.linuxtricks.org/changenet.html Remember to stay calm and have fun you'll learn more than when you get frustrated.

[linuxfan]

Hi,

When you installed linux, if you installed lilo on your boot partition which is different than your win2k, the easiest way to modify your bootsector on your win2k box is to use bootpart. Its very lightweight, simple to use.
You can get bootpart from
http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm

Try it, the instructions that come along are very self explanatory.

-Regards
Ramesh