CYA installation help needed.

[panamahat]

For business reasons I can't take the chance of screwing up my XP system, but I want to use PCLinuxOS also.
I have XP on my C drive HD, and would like to set things up so that at startup my system loads GRUB from either a floppy on my A drive, or a CD on my B drive. Then GRUB would offer me the choice between XP on the C drive, or PCLinuxOS installed on a USB HD. I need a simple, (read monkey mode) way to do this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Rudge]

If you don't want to install anything to your hard drive, why not just use the LiveCD when you want PCLinuxOS?

You know you can "duel boot". If that is the option you want, PCLinuxOS makes that real easy. Just do an install, and when PCLinuxOS sees XP, a duel boot will be the default.

A duel boot does install Linux onto the hard drive, but it does nothing to your XP install. It will remain intact as is. Grub starts and asks you what os to use.

[panamahat]

If you don't want to install anything to your hard drive, why not just use the LiveCD when you want PCLinuxOS?

Because it's slow and I can't customize anything.

You know you can "duel boot". If that is the option you want, PCLinuxOS makes that real easy. Just do an install, and when PCLinuxOS sees XP, a duel boot will be the default.

I would prefer a dual boot without the pistols.

A duel boot does install Linux onto the hard drive, but it does nothing to your XP install. It will remain intact as is. Grub starts and asks you what os to use.

I started to do that, but I was stumped as to which of the four partition options I should use.
I am also scared crapless that the partition process will screw up my XP, after having read so many
horror stories on the web. That's why I thought of keeping everything separate. Kind of a belt and suspenders approach. It also allows me to use a spare 8GB HD I have laying around.

[ThirdOfSix]

When I was first starting with Linux, I was in the same position.

I absolutely did not want to risk my Windows XP install because I no longer had the original disks for some of the installed applications.

Also, I was doing most of my trying of distributions on an old slow test machine and found many of the installers to be ambiguous at best.

Most of them were not a problem. But I had one of the more popular distributions scramble  my multiboot setup at a time when I did not have the knowledge to repair it.

Knowing that that was always a possibility, and after finding out the PCLOS was the only distribution whose live CD worked on my machine allowed me to use my dual monitor set up and actually change the scan rate such that I got no headache, I went with a PCLOS dual boot install on my main machine.

I still was not brave/trusting enough to use the normal installer and allow it to repartition for a dual boot system.

So, since it was a desktop machine with room for an other drive, I set it up with a second hard drive just for Linux and set GRUB up to chainload the original Windows install.

And just to be extra safe, I installed Linux with the power cable unplugged on the original drive containing windows. That way, I was able to install Linux on its own drive and test it thoroughly before even powering up the Windows drive again.

On top of that, since I really really did not want to lose my Windows install, I imaged my windows drive before I did anything.

It worked out just fine.  And, since I still don't want to take a chance on losing that Windows install, I always unplug that drive when I do a major update or version change on the Linux install. This is mostly because I do not trust Windows.

So, before you do anything, do a search on the forum for Windows and chainloader and pay particular attention to posts by Old-Polack.

Now, the truth of the matter is I and others have done many dual boot installs on Windows machines using the defaults in the PCLOS installer with absolutely no problems. You will probably have no problem doing it that way.

But, since I know that Murphy as in "Murphy's Law" is just waiting for me to have a moment of brain fade during an install, I never "risk" my main install of Windows using the default installer.

Just take your time and use the live CD for a while and read the forums before you take the leap.

Still, the second drive and chainload method is by far the least risky approach.

Good luck.

[ff103]

Excellent advice by ThirdOfSix, I used this approach once myself, and even went so far once as to put a toggle switch between the drives so I could "turn on" which ever drive I wanted to use. Now days I just use two computers and a KVM switch and then use Smb4k to transfer files between the windows and Linux machines. Maybe one day Linux will have some Flash building software and I won't need to use windows at all.

[parnote]

panamahat,

Check out JohnBoy's article in the December issue of the PCLinuxOS Magazine. He describes, step-by-step, on how to manually create a Live USB flash drive, with persistence (meaning you can save changes). It runs exceptionally fast from a USB flash drive, and his directions are spot on. Just follow along and do exactly as the article says.

parnote

[nixer]

I too got started with linux in the same manner as you did, panamahat.  My first install was on a "work" computer which I was paranoid about losing the windows install.  Naturally, I imaged the windows install, just in case Murphy's Law came true.  Then in a further attempt to protect the windows install, I installed linux to a partition and did not install Grub in the master boot record.  I allowed for windows to control the boot and installed grub in the linux partition.

There are several ways to do what you are wanting to do.  In my opinion, as a first step, I would image the drive, not just the windows partition.  Store this file to your external drive, if possible, or to another machine on your network, if you have one.
Then I would defragment the windows install a couple of times at least.
Repartition the drive to your liking with a boot / repair disk. This can also be done with and during the pclos install, but I prefer a boot / repair disk.
Install linux with the mbr setup that you choose.

I did this as a first step, then I installed a "standard" install of pclos with nothing but programs from the repository.  Then I got carried away and installed a "testing" install of pclos, to tinker and learn.  Before I knew it, I took the next step.
I purchased another drive, unplugged the original, plugged in the new, and installed on it what I wanted.  With this scenario, you can also image the original windows partition and install it to the new drive.  There are many ways of installing pclos while protecting your win xp.  It all begins with imaging the winxp and trusting the image file.

I am mentioning this as another possibility to "protect" your win xp install. 

Good Luck.

[caerhays]

Hi panamahat,

If you decide to pluck up the courage and install a dual boot to PCLOS on your existing hardrive, there are some points I would add to nixer's post to ensure your Windows installation remains unaffected by your PClinuxOS install:

1. When defragging Windows, do so in "safe mode" as it can improve the ability to defragment the file system

2. If you have really large files, eg. ISO files larger than say 500MB then move them to another storage media temporarily as Windows can sometimes have problems defragmenting such very large files. Move them back when everything is completed.

3. WinXP gives you the option of not using the pagefile if you have more than 512MB of RAM. Defragmenting cannot move a pagefile so disable it before defragmenting. To disable the pagefile, perform the following steps:

   1. Start the Control Panel System applet (go to Start, Settings, Control Panel, and click System).
   2. Select the Advanced tab.
   3. Under the Performance section, click Settings.
   4. Select the Advanced tab.
   5. Under the Virtual Memory section, click Change.
   6. Select No Paging File and click Set.
   7. Click OK.
When you have defragmented, remember to enable the pagefile again.

4. Use the "chdsk /f /r" command to check the disk and repair file errors. Do this before all the above steps.

If you're creating new partitions on your existing drive containing Windows so that you can install PCLOS, the above steps should ensure your partitioning only affects truly free space and does not harm your Windows install.

Naturally you need to have sufficient space on your original drive to install PCLOS and should leave a minimum of 10GB free space on the Windows partition to ensure Windows functions properly (and preferably a lot more if you plan to use it a lot in the future).

I have done this twice now on my desktop and my notebook and the PCLOS dual boot menu has handled it flawlessly. This is the the kind of quality system you are getting provided by Texstar and his team.