The Answer Guy

Windoze [sic] on 2nd Hard Drive

From Anthony Kamau on Tue, 16 May 2000

I have Linux installed on the 1st hard drive and want to boot to windoze on the 2nd hard drive. I read somewhere that I could fool windoze into thinking that it is on the first harddrive by changing a few parameters in the "lilo.conf" file. Would you happen to know what I need to add to the this file in order to have it dual boot.

Thanks, Anthony.

I don't know. But I don't recommend this way of doing things. MS Windows and other Microsoft products are somewhat brittle and it's a bad idea to try to fool them. Even it it works for some situations, for awhile, it can break as the situation changes and whenever you upgrade any of their products.

So, I'd really suggest putting Linux on the second drive and letting MS Windows have the first drive. Linux is very flexible and is far less likely to break something like this from one upgrade to the next (and you'll always have the Linux sources to fix anything that we do break).

Remember, if you have any problems with LILO on a system where you are running any sort of MS-DOS derivative --- take the easy way out and run LOADLIN.EXE. It's often much easier then fussing with boot records. In the worst case, use a SYSLINUX or LILO floppy and boot Linux from that.

Copyright © 2000, James T. Dennis
Published in The Linux Gazette Issue 54 June 2000

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