Windows 2k and XP have significant improvements in the boot procedure. They still clobber the MBR as Wei-shi mentioned, but they -will- run happily off the second hard drive. My desktop used to have 2 hard drives, with Windows XP on primary-master, another XP install and linux on the secondary-slave. I could choose any of the 3 from lilo and it worked beautifully. Lilo was installed on the MBR of the first drive.
When you install XP, you can choose which drive to install to and create a new partition if necessary. My recommendation is to make a partition ahead of time with fdisk under linux, the 2k/xp fdisk likes to renumber your partitions and crazy stuff like that, then let xp format it with fat32/ntfs. After the install, you should be able to just add the windows partition as an other= and install lilo in the MBR. Patrick Quoting Michael Yuan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > Hi guys, > > I have not used windows for years. But recently a project I am working > on > requires some tools that are only available under windows xp. So, I > need > to put in a second harddrive (I want it to be a slave on the first IDE > bus) in my system and try to install windows xp on it. I hate this. But > I > do have to. I hope some dual boot guru on this list can help me out. > > Most online dual boot howtos only discuss one drive scenario and they > only > discuss how to install Linux after windows is installed on the primary > partition. I guess that means the two disk setup will be easy and > hence > require not discussion? > > But before I do anything, I want to be absolutely sure that windows xp > will not do *anything* to my linux HD. I want xp to be completely > installed on the second drive and I can choose boot options from the > BIOS. > > Is it possible? When I run windows xp boot CD, how do I know which > disk/partition it thinks is "C:"? Will windows xp insist to install on > "C:" or rewrite "C:"'s MBR? Will it give me warning before doing this? > > Thanks a lot in advance > > cheers > Michael > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Read Michael Yuan's technology articles > http://www.enterprisej2me.com/articles.php > Dr. Dobbs Journal, JavaWorld, IBM developerWorks and more ... > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Siglinux mailing list > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > http://www.utacm.org/mailman/listinfo/siglinux > _______________________________________________ Siglinux mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.utacm.org/mailman/listinfo/siglinux
