New convert and kit idea

[bob smith]

--- Michelle Lowman <mlowman@firstlinux.net> wrote:
> I have my first convert among my English students at
> PC. She brought her
> laptop to IF2, but whoever was doing the install
> gave up after her
> machine wouldn't boot from the CD. She wants to
> dual-boot with XP, so
> she's going to bring her laptop to class Monday, and
> I'm going to
> install Red Hat for her.
> 
> I was thinking that it would be a good idea to
> create a "conversion kit"
> for people who want to dual-boot. That way, if you
> ever run into anyone
> who is ready to try Linux but isn't quite ready to
> give up Windows, you
> can set them up right away. Knoppix is one
> alternative, but I was
> thinking of (1)fips (or PartitionMagic if you don't
> mind paying), or
> parted with a boot disk (although I've never used
> this one--I think it's
> non-destructive, but correct me if I'm wrong), along
> with (2)your
> favorite distro on CD(s), and (3)don't forget a
> boot.img floppy in case
> you can't get the box to boot from CD. I've used
> fips with older
> versions of Windows, but has anyone tried it with
> Windows 2000 or XP?  I
> couldn't get it to work with 2000 and I've never
> tried with XP. The kit
> could include partitioning instructions, etc. with
> screenshots for the
> visual learner (like me :)).
> 
> Whaddya think?

Sounds good. My friends machine had the booting XP and
Linux problem. He installed RedHat 7.3 at IF2 which
put grub on as the default bootloader (which is cool
because I like grub much better anyway). We had to
call upon the RedHat guy to try and help us get his XP
partition to boot (he had XP on a different disk). He
was insanely busy though. After about 30 minutes I
decided it was time to RTFM and that's all it took.

I put the following in his grub.lst

map (hd1) (hd0)
map (hd0) (hd1)
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1
make active
boot

You can probably cut off the first 2 lines if you are
installing Linux and XP on the same disk. Hope that
may help somewhat.

As far as using FIPS or Partition Magic I have used
neither. I just backup what I need and reformat the
disk :).

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