Problematic dual boot

[Derek Broughton]

Lisi Reisz wrote:

> Good evening all!
> Sorry - the bad penny has turned up again.... ;-)

Bad penny?  We haven't heard from you in ages...
> 
> His system is:  AMD Athlon 64 3500+; FoxconnK8m89OM2MB-RS2H motherboard; 1
> stick of 512MB RAM.
> 
> I am looking at reinstalling XP, while trying to leave Kubuntu alone,
> which could mess up the MBR; 

Yeah, but not _permanently_.  Make sure you have an Ubuntu Live CD (I can
even do it from Gnome), boot into it, open a console, mount the Kubuntu
partition to /mount (just a convenient place that you know exists and won't
hurt anything else), and run:

# sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mount /dev/...

(where /dev/... is the _disk_ containing the partition with your Kubuntu -
eg, if Kubuntu is /dev/sda5, then you use /dev/sda). 

Reboot - you may only get the Kubuntu partition as an option, depending
whether Grub ever was configured for XP.  If so, boot into Kubuntu, and add
the Windows partition in /boot/grub/menu.lst (just copying the commented
out Windows stanza should do it).

> or telling him that he needs more RAM and using Virtual Box.

That's cleaner, provided you have a full XP install disc - it won't work
with OEM discs.

> What would you lot advise?  Or what would you do in my shoes?  If
> installing XP with the Kubuntu partition as it is now would indeed, as I
> suspect, muck up the MBR so that Kubuntu became inaccessible, how easy
> would that be to
> fix?  And how would I fix it?  And am I right in thinking that, with more
> memory his system would be powerful enough for VB.  The maximum RAM his
> board can handle is apparently 2 GB.

My wife runs the same XP image as I do on a laptop with 1GB.  It's a bit
pushed.  otoh, he's running Kubuntu with 512MB now, so essentially what
you'd be buying is however much memory you think you need for XP.
-- 
derek