win xp dual boot

fhslacrosse13 · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 2

I have an Acer Aspire 3000 notebook with a Mobile AMD Sempron 2600+ processor, 512 mb memory, and a 40 gig hdd. I am currently running windows xp, but i would like to install gentoo and have it set up so that i can choose which os to boot to when i turn on my laptop. I am a pretty good windows user but only a novice when it come to any distro of linux. Is there a way that i can make the xp partition smaller so i can install gentoo?

Sangeki · Apprentice Joined: 23 Apr 2005 Posts: 186

Yes you can safely shrink your Windows Partition (even NTFS).
Unfortunately I don't know if the Gentoo LiveCD includes any kind of tools you could use for that.

You should definately check out the Gparted LiveCD.
It works really great.
I just resized a NTFS and FAT32 Partition recently without any Problems and the Image is only 30 MB big.

Vulpes_ · Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2006 5:38 pm Post subject:

You can use just about every partition manager software, including but not limited to linux apps. Partition Magic or PartImage or others, whichever you choose...

SithMaddox · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Jul 2004 Posts: 149

I have never been able to shrink an NTFS partition without corrupting it. I've tried qparted and partition magic, both screwed it up.

goamage · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2006 Posts: 2

i didnt have a problem with partition magic. i recomend it
_________________
Mage

pony-tail · n00b Joined: 01 Mar 2006 Posts: 46 Location: Brisbane

If you are using the Partition magic 8.0 bootable cd be VERY careful if you have XP SP2
as it will frag your system (SP1 is ok I believe) but if you have 8.0 installed in XP there
is a free update to 8.1 that has a fix for this - but it leaves the cd only useful for initial
setup or installation - no longer a problem for me I ditched XP SP2 and went back to 2k.
and my Gentoo box dual boots with - - - 98SE :oops:

but its only a rather lame PIII 800
_________________
Old but active

fhslacrosse13 · n00b Joined: 03 Mar 2006 Posts: 2

so i have a 40 gig hdd. should i just split it in half or leave a little more for the xp side seeing as i need that more for school and stuff. also when i resize the drive i should leave the part of the hdd that xp is not on unformatted right? then when i install gentoo it will format its part of the hdd.

pony-tail · n00b Joined: 01 Mar 2006 Posts: 46 Location: Brisbane

If you use the current graphical installer it has a setting that allows it to partition free space for Gentoo - 10 or 12 gig of free space at the back end of the drive would be fine. You will have to configure Grub to dual boot AFTER you have completed the first boot into gentoo as there is no option in the
installer to do it during install :-
something like this.
default 1
timeout 20
splashimage=(hd0,1)/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title=Gentoo Linux
root (hd0,1)
kernel /kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.15-gentoo-r5 root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sda4
initrd /initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.15-gentoo-r5
title=Windows 2000
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

You may have to change a few things like Win2000 to XP - But I hope you get the idea
the file is called - /boot/grub/grub.conf
edit it as root with nano or something similar.
_________________
Old but active