David Le wrote:
I assume that you want to put linux as primary master and windows as primary slave.Hi,
I have 2 separated disks and 1 PC. -Disk 1 installed Windows XP originally. -Disk 2 installed FC1 by me separately.
Currently, I have to swap between Disk 1 and Disk 2
when I boot-up my PC. It is very inconvenient so I
want to setup dual-boot such that I am able to select
the OS at the boot-up time and, in the futre, I can
always switch back to single boot with Windows XP disk
only.
I'm not sure if Linux boot loader will change any
thing on the master boot record of Disk1 (Windows XP)
such that I cannot boot Disk1 without Disk2 attached?
I still need Disk 1 for other critical tasks so I'd
like to leave Disk 1 untouched as much as I can.
Your answer is appreciated.
--david le.
What you want to do is not safe: windows xp has been installed on primary master as linux; so every "hard riferiment" (if they exist) on windows are on primary master: if you switch and they exists are lost; so DO A BACKUP COPY BEFORE START (i suggest you to do an hard disk image).
If on linux hard disk are any vaft/ntfs partition destroy it or reformat in any filesystem that windows does not recognize.
If you want to keep them separate i suggest you to boot with the recovery console and reinstall windows boot loader as primary slave.
After you have to control that the c:\boot.ini file has been modified for searching windows directory on primary slave: if it don't you have to modify it.
You should have a line similar to: multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(0)\WINNT="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /fastdetect
I suggest you to do a bertpe (http://www.nu2.nu/pebuilder/) cd and integrate in it the norton ghost 8.
Then try to boot and if it works you simply have to modify the grub configuration as suggested; if it does not works you have to restore the disk as primary master and run norton ghost to have "roll back" with the hard disk image.
