On Wed, 2004-09-01 at 17:10, Stephane Dellacherie wrote:
Hello,
I have previously installed FC2 by giving 80% of my hard drive to Linux. Then, I would like to format the remaining part of the hard drive (i.e. the remaining 20 %) with fat32 system to install a windowsXP.
Indeed, the windows XP that was "given" with my laptop refuses to be installed on the remaining part of my hard drive (cf. the remaining 20 %). It says that there are to many partitions !!!
And Microsoft refuses (of course !!!!!) to give any advice despite I was obliged to buy a winXP license !
That is why I think a solution would bet to previously format the remaining 20 % of my hard drive from the linux system with the fat32 system before trying to instal windowsXP.
Thank for your advice !
Stéph
AFAIK I do not believe it possible to install XP in an extended
partition.
What most do is reserve the first partition on the drive for XP and install Linux on the rest of the drive. Also, with everything I have heard or seen discussed, XP needs to be installed first, then install Linux.
This needs a bit more explanation:
First, you are allowed four (4) primary partitions on a hard drive. One of those four partitions may be an extended partition. Extended partitions may contain additional partitions, up to a total of 16 (3 primary, 1 extended, and 12 inside the extended partition).
Under Linux, the primary partitions (extended or not) will be known as /dev/hda1 through /dev/hda4 (or /dev/sda1 through /dev/sda4 if you use SCSI). The partitions INSIDE the extended partition will be called /dev/hda5 through /dev/hda16 (/dev/sda5 through /dev/sda16 for SCSI).
If you look at the partition table using Linux fdisk, you'll see that the extended partition will start at the same cylinder as the first partition inside it and will end on the same cylinder as the last partition inside it, which proves that the extended partitions contains the others.
The /dev directory does have entries for /dev/hda17-20, also, but AFAIK these are not usable.
The bootstrap code in your BIOS can only boot primary partitions. It can't boot an OS on a partition inside an extended partition. On top of that, many BIOSes can't boot an OS that doesn't _at least_ start on cylinder 1023 or less (the BIOS can only directly address 1024 cylinders).
Windows (regardless of what variety you want to install, W95, W98, W98SE, WME, NT, XP, XPPro, W2K, W2KServer, W2003) thinks it owns the whole machine and will blissfully wipe out any non-Windows OS that happens to be installed. You can't prevent it.
So, you must install Windows first and during that installation, manually partition the drive and reserve some of the disk for Linux to
live in (in Windows parlance, this is "unused" space). Once Windows is
up, you can install Linux in that reserved space. Linux will see
Windows and offer to put it in your grub (or lilo) boot manager so you
can boot Linux or Windows.
Linux "plays nice" with other OSes. Windows does not and probably never will.
"Working with Linux is like wrestling with a worthy opponent. Working with Windows is like teasing an annoyed child with a loaded hand gun." ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer rstevens@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx - - VitalStream, Inc. http://www.vitalstream.com - - - - Whoever said "Money can't buy friends" obviously never brought - - donuts to the office. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
