Mark Bailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: # Date: Mon, 23 Jan 2006 18:32:55 -0500 # From: Mark Bailey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> # To: freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net # Subject: Re: [Freedos-user] Dual Boot WindowsXP and FreeDOS - Alpha testers needed # # I was thinking a bit more about automating this. We # MIGHT be able to grab some stuff from a Linux installer # to automatically, under carefully defined conditions, # shrink the NTFS partition and create a new fat32 # partition. AFAIK, it can't be done under DOS at all. # Partition Magic just doesn't reliably work on NTFS # partitions as of 8.02 and XP Service Pack 2 (or # possibly, SP 1). And, Partition Magic is expensive # and has a restrictive license (use on one computer, # blah, blah, blah...).
Why not use ntfsresize? One could see about trying to get *that* built under DJGPP... or have I just pretended to be 'Q' and said "Simple, change the gravitational constant of the universe!" :) # Judging from the response to Version 1.0, though, # only one FreeDOS user was even interested in dual # booting a new machine. It appears everyone else # has already figured out how to meet their # requirements. Most of the folks I know use # old, dedicated machines to run DOS. Well, I do this - in fact I'm triple-booting SuSE 10, XP, and FreeDOS - and I even have XP recognizing its own drive as C: (which is the sneaky part) but I personally found it to be easy, if slightly convoluted. 1) Boot off of the SuSE CD in rescue mode and create an ext3 boot partition as partition 1. 2) Reboot onto the Windows XP boot disk and create a FAT32 partition, being sure to leave space after the end of that partition for your Linux root and swap partitions. Do not let it continue the install past formatting the partition. 3) Reboot into SuSE rescue and delete the ext3 partition. 4) Reboot into the XP installer. Let XP install. Since there are no other partitions on the disk, it will identify the single partition as C:. 5) Install FreeDOS, onto the same FAT32 partition. FreeDOS will see that XP is installed, and instead of replacing the boot sector it will put the boot sector into a file named FREEDOS.BSS and add itself to the BOOT.INI file for the NT boot loader. 6) Install SuSE, recreating the boot partition as before. For bonus points, remove the FreeDOS entry from BOOT.INI and add it to GRUB's menu.lst, so that you have a single boot menu :) For a dual-boot XP/FreeDOS install, skip steps 1-3 and 6, and simply install XP first. You could I suppose install XP and FreeDOS to separate FAT32 partitions if you wanted, though I haven't done that. ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://sel.as-us.falkag.net/sel?cmd=lnk&kid3432&bid#0486&dat1642 _______________________________________________ Freedos-user mailing list Freedos-user@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-user
