Dual Boot

[aniketn]

I have Red Hat Enterprise Linux installed on my system. There are no other OS. I want to make it a dual boot. with Windows XP. I have created partitions on my Linux drive so suppose If i want to install XP in maybe /dev/hda2, Can i proceed with it? If so how? Do you think XP will overwrite the MBR? Whatever the case is I want GRUB to load rather than ntldr in my OS choices menu. I know for sure this can happen as I have seen the the GRUB load and you have an option to boot windows from there on some PCs. I want to know how this can be done? I am asking this because i dont want to uninstall LINUX just yet.
Cheers
Aniket:D

[MadMax08]

I think that should be fine. I just did this, but reverse. I installed Fedora on my machine that already had XP. when you boot, GRUB loads, and you can boot your Linux (automatic) or "Other" in this case, XP.

[Paul Komski]

XP or earlier versions of windows will all overwrite the code on the bootstrap code on the MBR so you will have to reload and configure GRUB or LILO or any other boot manager that is run from the MBR. Installing Linux after Windows is a cinch - but not in reverse.

There's nothing to stop you making a copy of the mbr (or the whole of Track0) onto a floppy using mbrwork (http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/downloads/MBRWORK.ZIP) or similar and then restoring it after you have installed windows via a primary partition on FAT or NTFS. You would then have to edit GRUB to add the new installation to it.

If GRUB is run from the Linux boot partition instead of the MBR then you can add another installation to an appropriate free partition and install XOSL or BiNG to dual boot both Linux and Windows.

[sburtchin]

Backup track 0 according to Paul's instructions. Install XP, then restore track 0. Then add the following lines to "/boot/grub/menu.lst" (or wherever your menu is kept).

title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1