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How do I dual boot Windows XP and Fedora Care 8 with one HD

Jun 09, 2009  By corps_dryke
 in

I have been trying to dual boot Windows XP pro and Fedora Core 8. I have created two partitions on ONE hard drive. I installed Windows XP Pro on one partition. When I install Fedora Care 8 on the second partition nothing happens. I installed GRUB and backed up the boot loader for my Windows XP Pro OS. I still can't get it to dual boot. Is there any detail instruction on how to do a dual boot with one hard drive? I have one computer with two hard drives with the dual boot running fine. I need this computer with the one 40GB hard drive to be dual boot as well. Is there any way to do this with out having to buy a second HD for this computer?

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HOW CAN i do dual boot p vs fedora

younis's picture
Submitted by younis (not verified) on Mon, 03/15/2010 - 18:47.

dual boot xp vs fedora screenshots
can any one put it
thanks

Dual boot

corps_dryke's picture
Submitted by corps_dryke on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 16:50.

We are going to Start from scratch and let you know what the end results are.

Robert M AKA Corps Dryke

Dual boot will work

Mitch Frazier's picture
Submitted by Mitch Frazier on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 11:09.

There's no reason to buy a second hard drive, you just don't have things configured correctly. What is the current state? Do either of the operating systems currently boot?

Mitch Frazier is an Associate Editor for Linux Journal.

Dual boot

corps_dryke's picture
Submitted by corps_dryke on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 12:45.

Windows XP will boot just fine. Though the Fedora Core 8 os wont boot at all. Even though I have GRUB installed. What should the configuration be for this too work? I have tried many different ways to try to get my dual boot to work on one hard drive and none have been successful. (I.E. I installed Windows XP on one partition first backed up the boot loader. Then I installed Fedora Core 8 making my boot (/boot) then my mount point (/) and then making my swap. Both the /boot and the mount point are ext3. This didn’t work. I then whipped the HD out with my UPT disk. I started from scratch. I then installed Fedora Core 8 first using the same /boot, mount point and swap settings as I did when I installed Windows XP first. I partitioned off the HD during the install of Core 8. I checked off force to be primary partition. (the last time I tried I didn’t check off force to be primary partition.) Next I made sure that my GRUB boot loader was being installed. When I was done setting up Fedora Core 8, I then installed Windows XP Pro.

Robert M AKA Corps Dryke

Dual Boot

Mitch Frazier's picture
Submitted by Mitch Frazier on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 13:43.

The preferred order is to install XP first, then Linux. Preferred because Windows is not generally dual boot friendly, it just assumes that it owns the entire computer and it boinks any installed boot loader. Most Linux installers these days will automatically set up dual boot if they see an already existing install.

That said, even if you installed XP after Linux it is possible to fix things without re-installing everything again. However, it may be simpler to re-install everything. :)

If you want to try to repair things, boot from a Rescue CD (the Fedora Install CD may have a "rescue" or "repair" mode which should suffice). Once you've found a shell prompt you can use grub itself to fix things. The exact commands needed to fix it will depend on your hardware setup. See this post for an example of the types of commands that you'll need to execute.

Mitch Frazier is an Associate Editor for Linux Journal.

Dual boot

corps_dryke's picture
Submitted by corps_dryke on Wed, 06/10/2009 - 17:14.

Dual boot Windows XP and Fedora Core 8 on one hard drive.

We first started the install process for windows XP Pro on the hard drive. We partitioned off the hard drive into two partitions. We completely loaded Windows XP without any updates, (We figure that we can do that at a later time.) Our Windows XP Partition is set at 20GB(20420MB) on one partition. Once the install was done for windows we restarted the computer. We inserted the Fedora Core 8 DVD. The second partition that we installed Fedora Core 8 on is, 18GB (18432MB) in size due to hard drive space for the boot and the swap partitions. Then we selected Use free space on selected drive and create default layout. For this install of dual boot we used a 40 GB Hard drive.
The way we set up the Fedora Core 8 install was to let the installer set up the boot loader automatically so that nothing fogged up the boot loader. You can usually pick any packages you want and it will run normally. To pick the operating system you want to boot, when you turn on your computer wait until you see the “booting fedora screen press any key to enter the menu”. Press any key and it will take you to the GNU GRUB boot loader. In this menu you should see Fedora (what ever flavor you installed) and an option named other. The other option should be your windows XP installation. Pick the operating system you want to boot and press enter and it should boot your selected operating system.

Written By;

Nick M
Robert M

Robert M AKA Corps Dryke

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