Dual Boot Manager Wanted (XP & Mandrake Linux)

[Big Johnny]

Does anyone know of a freeware dual boot manager available out there for a
Pentium PC.

Basically, I already have Windows XP on my C: drive. I want to install
Mandrake Linux on the empty D: drive. When I first boot up the computer, I
want a boot manager to come up and ask me which OS I want to use. Ideally,
if I don't answer in a few seconds, it would go to XP.

I know nothing about Linux, so I want to avoid all the cryptic DOS-type
commands that I've seen in Linux until I have a chance to play with it for
awhile. Also, the program should do any repartioning of my C: drive that
might be necessary to accomplish this.

And, it does have to be Mandrake Linux, so please don't suggest any other
releases. The project I need to work on uses Mandrake on their PC's, and I
don't want to try to get used to more than one version.

Thanks,
Big John

(e-mail address removed) (remove the "nospam" to respond directly)

 

[-Art- (not Art)]

The last time I installed Mandrake it had all the tools you need to
perform the actions you want. Mandrake will give you the option to
install grub on the master boot record, but you will had to change the
boot options (order) when you first boot into Mandrake. It also has
partitions tools as well, thou as a newbie you might feel more
comfortable a GUI-based program.
I suggest Partition Logic http://partitionlogic.org.uk/
I use the CD ISO version, just burn the iso to a cd, then boot from
that cd.

Good Luck,
-Art-

 

[jmatt]

Here are a few to look at.

Extended Operating System Loader (XOSL)
http://www.pricelessware.org/thelist/sys.htm
http://www.xosl.org

System Commander
http://www.v-com.com/product/sc2_ind.html

MWRLOAD
http://www.simtel.net/pub/pd/11268.html

Dual booting Linux and Windows 2000/XP on large hard disks
http://www.enterprisedt.com/publications/dual_boot.html

Mandrake Linux 8.1 Dual Boot mini-HOWTO
http://www.bioinformatics.ca/howto/mandrake_dualboot.php

LILO mini-HOWTO
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/LILO.html

Boot Loaders and Booting the OS
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/os.html#OSBOOT

 

[jmatt]

More info.

You will probably find Mandrake has Grub bootloader built in.
http://www.geocities.com/epark/linux/grub-w2k-HOWTO.html
http://geodsoft.com/howto/dualboot/grub.htm

BootPart
http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm
BOOTPART lets you add partitions to the Windows NT/2K/XP Multiboot
menu. Usually, you will only have a MSDOS or Windows 95 entry and one
(or several) Windows NT entries on this boot menu.
With BOOTPART, you may add any partition to the menu. You may add an
OS/2 Multiboot partition, or a Linux Partition (with Lilo) to this
menu.
The only thing I highly suggest is: your active partition on your first
hard disk must be a FAT16 primary partition. This may be a small
partition.

Smart Boot Manager (SBM)
http://btmgr.sourceforge.net/
Smart Boot Manager (SBM) is an OS independent and full-featured boot
manager with an easy-to-use user interface. There are some screenshots
available.
The main goals of SBM are to be absolutely OS independent, flexible and
full-featured. It has all of the features needed to boot a variety of
OSes from several kinds of media, while keeping its size no more than
30K bytes. In another words, SBM does NOT touch any of your partitions,
it totally fits into the first track (the hidden track) of your hard
disk!

 

[jmatt]

Main link for Smart Boot Manager (SBM)
http://btmgr.webframe.org/

====================================

Hack the Windows NT/2000/XP Boot Loader
http://ad.doubleclick.net/adi/oreilly.ds/home;pos=tallbook_home;sz=120x240;ord=1434031997?
Customize what and how you boot using the BOOT.INI file.
The BOOT.INI file was introduced with Windows NT and lives on through
Windows 2000, XP, and 2003 as a means to provide preboot reference to
where the operating system is located and control over which operating
system will be used. It allows users to select the DOS environment or
the Windows NT environment (which does not support many of the
applications and direct hardware access that DOS does). BOOT.INI can
also be modified to support the addition of another drive that has an
operating system installed (perhaps unknown to the operating system on
the first/original disk drive), giving you multiboot support to a
non-Microsoft OS.

Booting Linux
You can boot Linux from BOOT.INI with a little trickery. The first step
is to install a Linux bootloader, such as GRUB or LILO, onto your Linux
partition. So, supposing your Linux root partition is /dev/hda6, you'd
set up the GRUB bootloader with these commands:

Grub booting XP on one disk, Linux on another.
I was able to get Grub to work on my system but I needed a trick to do
it.

=========================================

MultiBooting Principles
http://www.goodells.net/multiboot/principles.htm

 

[Mark Warner]

Does anyone know of a freeware dual boot manager available out there
for a Pentium PC.

Basically, I already have Windows XP on my C: drive. I want to
install Mandrake Linux on the empty D: drive. When I first boot up
the computer, I want a boot manager to come up and ask me which OS I
want to use. Ideally, if I don't answer in a few seconds, it would
go to XP.

Mandrake/Mandriva will do this automatically. During the installation,
you will need to tell it where to install, and you'll point it to the D:
drive (hdb1). It will then install the bootloader (I think Mandrake uses
LILO; not sure) on your MBR. Afterwards, you'll be given a choice of
which OS to boot, although the default will be Mandriva. The default can
be changed later.

 

[Le Loup]

Mark Warner a écrit :

Mandrake/Mandriva will do this automatically.
yes

(I think Mandrake uses
LILO; not sure)

yes too


Cordialement,
Hervé LOTH

 

[Whirled Peas]

Does anyone know of a freeware dual boot manager available out there for a
Pentium PC.

Basically, I already have Windows XP on my C: drive. I want to install
Mandrake Linux on the empty D: drive. When I first boot up the computer, I
want a boot manager to come up and ask me which OS I want to use. Ideally,
if I don't answer in a few seconds, it would go to XP.

I know nothing about Linux, so I want to avoid all the cryptic DOS-type
commands that I've seen in Linux until I have a chance to play with it for
awhile. Also, the program should do any repartioning of my C: drive that
might be necessary to accomplish this.

And, it does have to be Mandrake Linux, so please don't suggest any other
releases. The project I need to work on uses Mandrake on their PC's, and I
don't want to try to get used to more than one version.

Hello Big John,
I would recommend that you consider installing ubuntu Linux over Mandriva.
Ubuntu automatically will install the GRUB boot loader for you allowing you
to choose between ubuntu and WinXP on boot-up.
The reason I recommend ubuntu over Mandriva is the user community is VERY
helpful for ubuntu. People who "know nothing about Linux" are made to feel
welcome and your questions, which I am sure you will have, get answered
without flames.
You can read about ubuntu here: http://www.ubuntulinux.org/
You can see the online forums here: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/
You can download the ISO for the LIVE CD (which will load the OS without
making ANY changes to your computer from this page:
http://mirror.mcs.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/5.10/
You can also download the install CD from that page. You can also order
FREE CDs from Ship-It here: https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ You don't even have
to pay the shipping costs.
I've been using ubuntu for three months now and have been windows free for
two.

Good luck!