Installing DualBoot - BackTrack and WinXP with 5 Primary Partitions

[shamanvirtuel]

nothing
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[tkxmoe]

Great guide, however im unclear as to when (before installing xp or after) to actually install back track 2?

I have all the partitions ready and xp installed, how do i install back track 2 without stuffing up my win xp boot

[purehate]

Follow the dual boot movie on the back track wiki. There is also a transcript that goes with it.

[ExitOnly@]

Great guide, however im unclear as to when (before installing xp or after) to actually install back track 2?

I have all the partitions ready and xp installed, how do i install back track 2 without stuffing up my win xp boot

If you have the partitions ready (512MB fat32, XP ntfs and ~10 GB EXT2/EXT3), you need to follow carefully the guide from post #1.
I'll post here a shorter version of the guide if that's too long.


For dual booting with XP, I think it´s a lot better and safer than the one in Wiki (especially with laptops that don´t have/support winxp "rescue" cd). If anyone disagrees with me here, please let me know.

[purehate]

I just took a read through that tutorial and well I wouldn't boot my computer that way The dual boot video is great and will have you up and running in no time. Its always best to follow the guide put out by one of the actual creators of the distro. Seems to me he would know best. I'm glad that guy in the first post got 5 partitons going but WHY?

[ExitOnly@]

I just took a read through that tutorial and well I wouldn't boot my computer that way The dual boot video is great and will have you up and running in no time. Its always best to follow the guide put out by one of the actual creators of the distro. Seems to me he would know best. I'm glad that guy in the first post got 5 partitons going but WHY?

Yes, I got my laptop up and running without further problems with the "original way" (other distros also with lilo/grub). But later on, Windows XP gave me problems, it wanted to rewrite mbr after every single reboot.. After a few weeks, the mbr got so messed up, that nothing booted. That would have been easy piece, if only my laptop would have a windows xp install cd that would boot (the hd wasn't compliant with xp install cd from other computer) and rescue the corrupted mbr. I only had "rescue dvds", which reinstall everything (bye-bye holiday photos).

Yes, the fault was mainly between keyboard and bench here "blaah, backup is for pu****s", but my point here is that at least for the mbr (don't know how many people have the same symptom of windows rewriting it), this method is safer (and has grub instead of lilo).

Just to be curious: how your install failed?

p.s.
I admit the 5 partitions is something... not perhaps necessary for everyone..

[purehate]

I couldnt tell if you were asking me if install failed or if you were asking the other guy. I never tried it. It just didnt seem like something I would do. I have data partitons on all my machines. In the case of dual booting I simply but bt all on one partiton. Violia problem solved with 4 partitons. I personally can not tell any difference with having a seperate boot/kerel partition.

[ExitOnly@]

I couldnt tell if you were asking me if install failed or if you were asking the other guy. I never tried it. It just didnt seem like something I would do. I have data partitons on all my machines. In the case of dual booting I simply but bt all on one partiton. Violia problem solved with 4 partitons. I personally can not tell any difference with having a seperate boot/kerel partition.

Sorry, I read your "I wouldn't boot my computer that way" as couldn't

[The_Denv]

Hey everyone,

Its great that my tutorial is actually being used. Im glad a lot of people are getting good use out of it. I read all the comments and I will reply fully once I recover from my hangover tomorrow ...

...5 Partitions is only because I wanted a more tidy apperance. The original way of installation is great, but for me back in November 2006 I could not get it to work.

I formmated my drive, created the partitions, installed XP, edited the boot file on XP, restarted/loaded BT, installed GRUB etc etc....[all on tutorial]

So to the guy who questioned if I installed XP first...yes I did.

A lot of people emailed me on this saying thanks, I wish to say thanks back for using it ..Also I was messaged in the forums by a member who asked me if he could upload it to Wiki and edit some of the lines in my tutorial. So, I dont have time now...but you may find a cleaner cut of my tutorial on Wiki now...I havent checked yet

Good luck all, happy halloween

--The_Denv

[F4RR4R]

What is the purpose of your 512MB FAT32 data partition?

I'm hoping for a few tips along a similar line: I've already got a dual boot system with Win XP Pro & Ubuntu. I'm already using GRUB (it was installed by Ubuntu). I've got about 15GB unallocated on the end of my disk right now, that I'd like to use for a BT3B install. I have done a manual partition in VMWare to install BT3B, so I imagine this will be similar.

So, I'm thinking: the basic steps will be, create a new extended partition, toss an ext3 partition for the bt3b install and a swap partition in it.
In the VMWare tutorial, I used the built in installer to install BT3B. I can probably use the same method here, no?
Then I'll just need to edit the GRUB configuration file to point to the new BT3B installation, right?

And, similar to the tutorial here, I'll just need to add the lines:
timeout=4
title Slax
kernel /boot/vmlinuz max_loop=255 root=/dev/sdaX vga=791 rw

... am I missing anything? Or wrong?