dual boot?

[hagen van rissenbeck]

Hi, Charlie,

/snip
> does the install process preserve the Windows partition & allow dual boot?

In general: Yes, but it depends on your behaviour...;-)

Tips for a dual boot install

1. You should know what partitions you have on your drive(s)
2. Start for example a knoppix live-cd-system, open the qtparted tool 
and have a look.
3. Note the number of each partition incl. its size.
4. If necessary, delete an ntfs partition (move your datas on that 
partition before you start to delete it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
5. Create a number of new partitions. Partition philosophies exist a lot 
    among users: one partition for the root file system (/), one for 
/home/, perhaps one for datas (for example /mnt/archive), don't forget a 
swap partition (size between 0,5 up to 1 GB), formatted with swap.
6. Using qtparted, format the partitions for your linux system only with 
ext2-format. Otherwise, if you're using ext3, qtparted interrupts the 
formatting operations with sending bug infos, I don't know the reason, why.
7. If you would like to share datas with your windows system, format the 
  partition you're using for sharing with fat32-format (in my example: 
/mnt/archive). Write permissions from linux on ntfs-partitions are still 
experimental (Danger!). >>> Shutdown the knoppix session.
8. When you start (k)ubuntu's installation routine, select all options, 
which allow you to handle individual settings.

9. Some instruction for a dualboot-installation are at:

http://ca.geocities.com/zachandloricox%40rogers.com/ubuntu/windowsxp.html

10. Don't be afraid about a first start of your windows system. In all 
cases I installed ubuntu as a second system on a xp-disk, grub (the 
bootloader) recognised the first installation and included it ´to the 
boot menu.
11. DON'T FORMAT ANY NTFS PARTITION DURING THE INSTALLATION PROCESS! The 
text based menu of the installer is not very comfortable to handle at 
that part of the installation process.


12. Have a lot of fun...

13. Ah, I forgot: save all your datas before you start the installation....


Hope that helps

Hagen