Windows XP Booting in Circles

[muckshifter]

Got a USB external drive, USB stick or flash drive handy or even over a network ...

Unfortunately yes, you will need to keep the Knoppix CD in the drive ...

Making a small partition on the NTFS drive will not be practical, you could loose it all.


I'm only learning, so I would be off to my favorite Linux forum.

 

[TECHGUNS]

Copy Linux to a USB drive and set the bios too boot from it.

I hope ya have USB.

Editing for the question below.

In the bios if it doent have USB look for Other.

 

[kel]

usb it is then...

of course I got usb, tho I didnt know you could set bios to boot from usb...hmmm...I dont seem to remember that option in bios...?? Do ya still have to use the disk to get to the load screen and then get a prompt as to where to boot from, or do you literally mean to set the boot from usb within bios??

 

[TECHGUNS]

Ya can do it in DOS but most people cant drive it. Freeware can help. All the free ones are DOS. Ranish will probably work ya have to do it on floppy.

http://www.ranish.com/part/

I havent tryed live Linux on a partiton.

I think ya can use fat32 and when you need it just set the bios. USB is fat32.
Since its a live Linux I dont think ya have to dual boot it.

 

[TECHGUNS]

Opps I think a post is missing.

If your reading this and dont know whats going on.



Yes Kel recoverd and is makin extra partitions before clean install.

 

[kel]

pARTITION CONFLICTS??

tHATS RIGHT.. I've created an extra partition just under 3 gigs should I wish to install a LINUX system later on...tHATS PROB MORE THAN ENOUGH...THO YOU CAN NEVER BE SURE THESE DAYS..

Im now reinstalling XP on a seperate partition with NTFS...

Will there be a conflict between partitions if one is NTFS nad the other FAT(32?)...?

 

[Skinz]

No should be no problem if you formatted your spare partition with FAT32, Windows XP wil read both quite happily. But to install Linux on that partition if/when you need to it will probably have to be formatted to its own file system I guess.

 

[kel]

Thats ok then...

Good job I didnt actually format the spare partition then...

 

[kel]

Where to start?

Maybe this would be a good time to start a new thread...But since sampling a bit of the Linux OS via KNOPPIX v4.0...as i said before, I wouldn't mind installing a Linux OS parallell to my XP installation...But where do I begin? Any experienced Linux users/nuts like MUCKSHIFTER maybe can point me to a good starting point program for a Linux newbie!...

 

[muckshifter]

Any experienced Linux users/nuts like MUCKSHIFTER ...

HEY! who you calling experienced? I'm just nuts, ok.

 

[TECHGUNS]

I think dual booting is kinda unsafe and it could cause more problems than the one ya just had. A boot virus can mess it all up easyer.

Some boot viruses do firmware damage to the drives flash chip and you will have to use the drive firmware to write zeros and reflash the chip on the drive....in other words when ya dual boot it changes the firmware and a virus make the drive all confused when ya have to format it again and a single OS the drive dosent get confused.

Now Im crying cause you can tell that its a real pain.

If ya have a Sygate drive and some other brands youll be trashin it because of no firmware support. Yull be starting over from the begining and usein KNOPPIX v4.0 to recover again.

Its safer to use Linux on a dedicated PC for it.

I think ya can put KNOPPIX v4.0 on a partition and use bios to boot from it or keep it on a USB drive. That might be safer than dual booting.

 

[kel]

What about Slackware?

Okay, thats a good point, thanks for pointing that out! But I have just been investigating the alternatives to windows based music software (that costs too much) to see whats out there (on Linux) and was suprised to find quite a few Linux Audio Distro's that run on Linux packages such as Slackware... If these Audio packages can run on knoppix then no problem, I will probably just install knoppix on my third partition. Do you know if Slackware would cause dual boot problems tho? As one of the packages in particular runs on this Linux distro... Would be good to know! Thanks in advance!

 

[TECHGUNS]

I havent tryed the install Slackware version but I have read that its a very good OS. I use Slax for recovery its the live CD version of Slackware and I like it and Slax will fit on a mini CD disc. Its almost the same thing as KNOPPIX.

Its been around for a long time so alot of programs are written for it.

http://www.slackware.com/
http://slax.linux-live.org/download.php

I have Redhat its ok for office stuff and works on P2, but I want SUSE.

I think if your real "media" serious and have a P3 or P4 SUSE 10 is what ya want it free for personal use, but it will take awhile to download. Its the most upgrade Linux now, eveyone is starting to use it, and it has drivers for almost any card. Except for my Audigy soundblaster.
Its the future Linux for the media machine and has many media programs for it, like for TV tuner cards.
7 CDs 600MB even with DSL use FTP.

http://www.opensuse.org/Released_Version

If ya dont want to dualboot which is not good, stick with a USB or boot it from bios on a partion untill ya get another PC for it.

Oh some distros will work on a lot of Linux version some wont. Thats a pain.

 

[TECHGUNS]

Now that your into it ya might want to start some questions in the Linux thread.

 

[kel]

thanx...will do and keep ya updated!...gotta crash now...