danleff

I'm not sure why you would want to do this and would not recommend it. I can say this from experience. I have found that the different distros do not always have 100% compatibility with each other, in terms of each distro being able to set up partitions correctly that will be easily recognized during each subsequent installation. The best way to do more than two distros is to pre-format your partitions before doing all the installations, with a partitioning utility like PartitionMagic. You can also do the preformatting with a Live CD distro, like Mepis, using qtparted. in other words, don't allow each distro installation to do the partitioning for you, even in expert mode. You have been warned! How to do it depends on your level of experience with Linux and manipulating the grub bootloader. The subject is much too long to post directions on such a thread. but... 1. If you decide to just install 2 distros on one hard drive (the easiest way), just do the installations in order of what distro that you want to have as your main distro. Your main distro is installed last, allowing grub to be your bootloader. I would install the newest version that you have last, which should allow it to pick up the previous installation and add it to grub for you. 2. If you install multiple distros on more than one drive, the same rule applies. Also, make sure that you have swap space on each drive. Why? In case one hard drive goes south, you still have an intact swap space on another drive. 3. Make sure that you keep track of where each distro is installed. Write down what partition thate each is installed to. If something goes wrong, you can easily identify where your distros are and rescue the missing distro. 4. Remember, if you allow grub to be installed during each installation, your previous grub is gone. This is not always clear during each distro installation. It is easy to miss unchecking the option not to install grub, say if you want to keep the grub of a previous installation. Of course, you need to add the new distro to your previous grub that you want to keep, manually. For this reason, you need to become expert with grub. This is also why you install your main distro last. That way, it picks up all previous installations (hopefully) and adds them to the new grub file. 5. If you are not good at manipulating grub, again install grub of your main disto last, as your previous distros should be picked up. in a muli-disk installation, where you have distros installed on different hard drives. The last grub will also map each distro that it finds on the other hard drives and partitions correctly. See what I mean? Previous distro installations don't know about new installations, unless you tell it so, manually. The newest installation will usually map and auto mount each Linux partition that it sees. SuSE is very good at this. Fedora does not do this automatically. Be aware, each distro does not always like a previous distros partitioning scheme. This is why you should use a partitioning utility to pre-format your drive. However, if you choose just two distros on one drive, you should be OK. Keep that Mepis Live CD handy for rescue tasks, as Mepis will autodetect each Linux partition and allow you to manually manipulate things, if something goes wrong. My recommendation? Install your most favored distros on one drive, become comfortable with them, then decide what to do from there. At last count, I have nine distros on my main machine, of course, to be able to respond to questions on this forum more completely. It was not without trial and error!

In a nutshell, that's it. There have been a few posts about this issue. the steps that you took were exactly what needed to be done. Nice going! The question now is, why does Fedora not do this? I think if you allow a default installation partitioning scheme, fedora makes a /boot partition on the target drive, but assumes that you have only one drive on the system, unless you specifically tell it where to put the MBR boot grub files to reference the /boot partition. If you seleced a previously partitioned drive, that had, say, an ext3 filesystem on it (using the expert mode partitioning scheme), then you would have had no problem with installing grub to hda. Interesting...

There are several ways to do this. The easiest? Pop in the Fedora install cd #1, or dvd and boot, just as if you are going to do an installation. At the main boot screen, type in; linux expert (or is it just expert?). Run the install until you get to the partitioning menu. Choose expert partitioning until you get to the actual list of partition(s) on your drive. Assuming that you have one partition on the drive which houses Fedora, choose that partition--> edit. Partition the drive/partition as fat32. Allow the actual partitioning to take place. Back out of the installation at this point, or remove the Fedora cdrom disk. Replace the cdrom disk with a full Windows installation disk, reboot and install Windows XP. Quote: - I'm also aware linux partitions are invisible to the XP cd, which is mainly the problem since the grub loader only shows one possible OS to boot/modify - Fedora. Yes, because grub is installed to the Master Boot Record on the drive. Re-formatting the partition should solve this. Since you made a fat32 partition on the drive, Windows should now see the partition that you made and allow a full installation. There are other methods that can work, depending if this fails for some reason, to do the job. Method 2 Don't tell anyone that I referred to this article!

Depending on what type of internet connection that you have, tells us what needs to be done to reach your internet connection. Broadband = such as RoadRunner (cable connection - always up) DSL = such as Verizon - you need a login name and password to connect? Dialup = you are using a modem through your phone line to connect. This is where you get more questions... So, in you case, is it broadband or DSL? Did you try to set up the internet connection during your installation of SuSE? This is often missed. You have 2 routers? If so, Your main router. Do you have WEP or WPA as security on the router? Do you know the essid of the router? So, the router does have everything to do with it. The wireless card needs to communicate with the router, depending on what the router is set at for an essid name and if applicable, a WEP or WPA password to allow a connection. If you have Windows set up on this system, I would guess that you did an installation of your internet connection of some sort to get it going, unless you have a totally open system to the internet. Let us know what your situation is and we can walk you through it.

I see a couple of issues here. The information posted is very helpful. Thanks for making it easier! Let's take a look at what you have. I notice that you clicked to make XP the default bootloader. There is also no entry in the device.map file for hdb. Get back into Fedora (I assume you made a boot disk?) and make Fedora the default boot option in the grub config. menu. Try from the command line (why not?) as root user; system-config-boot If this utility was not installed during your installation, use yum to install it. yum install system-config-boot Yes, Fedora wants to be the default, not XP. You can always change this later. Look at this article as a reference. Look under the installation notes; Quote: If you are dual booting Windows and Fedora Check the "other" check box on the "Boot Loader Configuration" page. Click "edit". Type "Windows" in the "label" box and uncheck the "default boot target" check box. Click "ok". Click the "default" check box next to "Fedora Core" to make it your default boot operating system. Click "Next". Make sure that "other" is there, as your XP boot option. Make sure that grub is installed to the MBR of hda.

Can you give a little more information on your wirelesss card and internet connection? Which card is in your system, the Intel PRO/Wireless 2100, Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG, or Atheros 802.11 a/b/g WLAN? Are you connecting via broadband or DSL?

Let's bump this a little. This is out of my area of expertise. I don't use SLES9, but will make a few comments, I hope you don't mind. Overclocking is a technique for the not-faint-of-heart. Your system is very nice! Do you really need to overclock it and chance potential stability issues? Overclocking depends on the ability of the system to tolerate this and some experience. Most of the settings that you can use to do this probably are in the bios, where hardware tweaking generally takes place. But, this is so dependent on the ability of the board to be overclocked, the quality of ram in the system and proper cooling, I mean real good cooling in the system. Also, the cpus need to be able to do this and not be locked by the manufacturer, to their actual speed and clock rate. I'm not aware of any software in Linux to do this. I see that there is monitoring software for this system, but don't see any Linux hardware boosting software. I would pose this question to the maker of this system/motherboard. Have you asked them? Does anyone have any information on this for nimrodg?

Quote: That little "linux rescue" made all the difference! I still don't get why I cannot mount / without "linux rescue" because I can see the partions with fdisk The Linux kernel on the boot disk, for some reason, will load the correct modules (drivers) to sense the usb drive, where the actual kernel and modules installed do not load the correct modules to see the drive and boot it correctly. That is why you need to alter the installed kernel with mkinitrd, which adds the modules you need to the actual installed kernel as the system boots. See this article to see what the situation is.

Well, let's see how to best respond to this situation... First, let me direct you to this article that may explain some things. What you have done, in effect, is reversed the designations of your partitions. I don't know how your drive partitions are being seen currently. In the best situation, you should have cloned the NTFS partition first for Windows 2000. The above article that I referenced may explain the issue somewhat. Let me ask the following; 1. There are no ide (pata) drives in the system currently? 2. What Linux distro and version are you running? 3. What is the bios set at to boot in order of drives and type of drives in the system. 4. What make and model motherboard is this that you have? 5. what utility did you use to "clone" the windows 2000 drive/partition? First, in terms of the actual boot order in the bios, what do you have. Also, is the system set to boot from any pata drive first, or sata first. In the bios, what is the designations of the drives being used for the bios to sense first... ide, scsi.... or scsi, ide....? Quote: I partitioned the first one with 100GB for a new Linux install, 10GB swap, and 190GB NTFS partition 10 gigs of swap space? This is way too much for normal use and a waste of space. How much memory is in this system? Quote: So, now I have a lovely, bootable via GRUB, Linux system. I've managed to make it fully functional, but I just can't boot the Windoze partition to save my life. Could this be because it's beyond "the 1024 boundary"? Well, yes and no. The MBR refers to the beginning of the hard drive. You have Grub on the beginning of the hard drive and XP further down on the hierarchy. Quote: Did I hose myself by replacing Windoze's MBR with GRUB's MBR? Do I need to reinstall Windoze's MRB with "fdisk /mbr" or something? (fdisk /mbr doesn't seem to work from windoze2000's command prompt...) You have grub on the MBR. If you installed Linux after Windows, you must use grub to boot into linux and Windows in a dual boot scenario. The fdisk /mbr is a dos function. Note the article (again) previously referred to. This command is usually done via a dos or Windows 98 boot disk (in dos mode). But, if you do this, then you forgo your ability to boot into Linux. But be aware,this technique does not always work. What would I do?...you may not like the answer. But first, can you post your grub.conf or menu.lst file contents? This will tell us something that may help. Then we can take it from there.

Try this how-to and see if that works for you.

When you installed Grub (the bootloader) during your installation of Fedora, where did you tell Grub to be installed, the Master Boot Record of your primary master disk, or the second drive where Fedora is installed on? This is a common mistake when doing dual drive installations, to have Grub installed on the second drive, which is not the drive that you actually boot from.

Thanks for posting a reply for this problem, but note that this thread is over one year old. If you respond to a thread question, make sure that you note the date of the last post, so you don't waste your time!

Well, you give very little information to go on. Please provide the following; 1. What distro and version of Linux are you using? 2. What version of gtk is currently on your system? 3. Did you consider trying a binary package for xdialog, rather than installing from source? The messages that you are getting tell you that either; 1. gtk is not in your path. 2. gtk 1.2 is not installed on your system. If you have a newer gtk on the system, than this apparently will not work This is an older library. See the xdialog faq page, question 12. Also see this reference.

You need to give us a little more information! Are you connected to the internet by modem, DSL or broadband? Are you using a USB modem or connected through a router/modem and NIC card? Did you try to configure your internet connection during the installation? I will ask this now, as it probably will come up. Any reason why you are using Fedora Core 1 rather than Core 4, which has better hardware detection for a wide array of devices?

The previous meassage should have read; Quote: Fedora Core 2 had a problem with the kernel that it used with the geometry of the drive if Windows XP was initially installed with the NTFS filesystem. It should not be used on such as system.

If you have the version 4 hardware, no, this is the incorrect driver. Take a look at section 3.1 of the wiki instructions. Follow them exactly. Do not attempt to install from the cd itself. Make sure that you copied the correct inf and sys files to the home directory. No more and mo less. One inf and one sys file. Then read the troubleshooting directions link on the bottom of that section.

Fedora Core 3 had a problem with the kernel that it used with the geometry of the drive if Windows XP was initially installed with the NTFS filesystem. It should not be used on such as system. Quote: "allignment of partition is not valid? it's safe to ignore but some boot loader may have some prob." This message should have warned you to stop the installation. Do you know the layout of the partitions? Where did you put the logical partition on the drive? Hopefully on the end of the partition table? What utility did you use to partition your hard drive? Was it the Fedora Partitioning Utility? Quote: also it's not booting fom any of the windows cd????????? What do you mean by any Windows cd? Do you have a full Windows installation cd, or just an upgrade version? What happend when you try to load the Windows cd? Was Windows pre-installed on this system and is it a Compaq or HP system? In any case, a fix for the problem can be found here.

I'm not sure how much progress has been made, by CrossoverOffice is a wine like emulator that may currently support QuickBooks. See this article which discusses it. Granted it is about an older version, but progress may have been made. You might also be interested in this article as well and is a more updated discussion.

OK, I just installed Ubuntu and tried this out. I used the ndis-gtk utility. From your last post, I see a problem. You installed both the v2 and v4 drivers? If so, this is a problem. You need to get rid of the v2 drivers. This will muck up the system. In a terminal window, as root user; sudo ndiswrapper -l If it lists both drivers, remove both that you see; sudo ndiswrapper -e <name of the first driver> So, the correct syntax should be something like; sudo ndiswrapper -e rt2500usb Do the same for the second. Use the exact name that you see from the ndiswrapper -l output. That's -l, as in the letter "L" (small l). Once you delete the active drivers, you should get no drivers recognized when doing ndiswrapper -l. Then try the gtk utility again, installing the inf file from only the v4 driver.

Good! You found that you needed to set the essid. Quote: Also I can't get it to boot on startup. I found the same thing. Fedora is quirky about this. I had to set a small script file to use to invoke the card and it's settings, as I could not get it to come up at boot. Then, you can make a small icon to bring up the card. It was a hit and miss thing. See my example here.

Yes, it does. I assume the new computer has the sata drive and the slave is pata. Look in the bios and see what the boot order is. There are two parts to this. One is the actual boot order of the drives, say cdrom as the first, hdd0 as the second... The other section is what type of drive boots first. Is the bios set to detect sata first, or pata first? It should show an order, such as; scsi, ide..... or; ide, scsi... If that order show ide first, then the bios attempts to boot any ide drive first. If scsi or sata, than the sata drives are detected first. If you are usure, post what motherboard make and model that this is, so we can look at the bios setup for your system.

Sounds like you either updated the kernel and lost alsa (the sound package) or missed some dependencies. So much for the updates. I assume you updated everything? Try some of the solutions found on this forum thread. BTW, what accounting software clone do you need/ what are you using in XP?

OK, I think that I see the confusion here. I believe that the main instructions are not totally clear. I actually think that I will try this myself and see what I get. What Windows drivers did you use...where did you get them from?

Quote: This is what I did, but it still boots to the GRUB command line. Luckily I have norton systemworks which restores the grub. I don't think that Norton's does this, does it? Can you explain? I think it restored the mbr which had grub. When it boots, it displays GRUB: Correct. The bootloader for Grub is still on the MBR of what is the slave drive now, so If you try to boot from the slave drive, then you just get the Grub text line. it does not have the reference files that were on the Linux partition. Quote: I am not trying to boot from the old drive. The new system is running windows xp media center. I don't think it's trying to boot from the slave drive. The new computer will not load if the old drive is installed. Correct again. So, then you said; Quote: I've tried putting the old drive in the new computer as "slave" and it does the same thing. Please help. So this led me to belive that you were trying to boot off the slave drive and getting the grub text line. I assume that the pictures that you are trying to recover are still on a Windows partition on the slave drive? If so, then can you see the Windows partition on the slave drive in My Computer and access the files you need to recover? There should be a drive designation in My Computer for this partition.

Let us know what the last step that you did was, in the instructions. What version of the Wusb54g do you have? Look at the underside of the unit and post the revision number that this unit is. Different revisions may have different chipsets that may or may not be supported. But, it looks like the card is detected. Let's see where you are with the instructions and we can go from there. Do you have your essid for the router and the WEP key (if you have one) for the router, so that the unit can connect?