Windows 98 & Linux dual boot machine

Since I made myself a dual boot machine a few weeks ago (which unfortunately suffered a harddrive crash the day before yesterday :() I thought it’d be wise to share the knowledge.

Things you’ll need: installation disks for operating systems (Windows98 kit & Linux kit) and a complete msdos startup disk with fdisk.exe and format.com.

Things that need to be done, in brief, in order:

1. Partition the disk

Take note: these operations are carried out on an empty harddrive, and the data contained on it is no longer needed!
So, we will need basically from 3 to 5 partitions.

• one FAT32 primary active partition for Windows [say 900MB]
• one Extended partition for Linux
  What I want to point out here is the fact that this partition’s filesystem will be set during the Linux install. This extended partition (or LVM in Linux) will be divided furthermore in two: a swap partition and a ext2/ext3/whatever-fs partition. For now all we need is to create this partitions, regardless of the filesystem.

Issue the following command at the prompt:

a:\>fdisk

If the partitioning is done via fdisk or parted, it’s no big difference, just pay attention not to destroy data you need from other harddrives plugged in. As a matter a fact, removing all other fixed drives before partitioning might prove a smart idea.

2. Reboot.
3. Formatting the FAT32 partition

Partitions created, we need to set a filesystem on them. For this we will issue the following command at the prompt:

a:\>format c: /s

The /s switch will copy the system files on the C: disk after the format has been completed.

4. Remove startup disk and reboot.

If the system fails to boot (say you’ve had GRUB installed and all you get is a blank screen ith it’s name on top left) boot again from the startup disk and execute:

fdisk /mbr

This will overwrite the master boot record which is telling the system from where on harddrive should it boot. Reboot

5. Boot from a bootable CD with Windows 98 or the startup disk with CDROM support (get the Win98 CD ready)
6. Install Windows 98 (pretty straightforward)
7. Boot from the Linux CDs
8. The partitioning part must be done manually.

Make sure not to destroy the FAT partition. Select the bigger empty partition from the LVM as a mount point for /. The filesystem should be ext2 or ext3. I use ext3. The other partition contained in the LVM will be formatted as swap

9. Allow GRUB/LILO to be installed

Windows 98 will appear as “Other” in the bootloader’s interface.

And that’s pretty much it.