install WinXP over Linux

[Adcadet]

hey all -
for the past few months my laptop has been running Mandrake happily. But, I'm starting a number of projects at work that require MS Word, Excel, and some other Windows-only software. So I'm going to install WinXP...but, my laptop can't boot from the CD. Any suggestions on how to install WinXP then? Is there a way to use a bootdisk? I know my Win98 bootdisk takes me to DOS which can't run the setup.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Adcadet

[timwhit]

You can run setup from DOS. Just get a CD-ROM driver installed and go into the i386 directory on the XP CD. The command to start setup is winnt.exe.

You will want to have smartdrive installed otherwise setup will take 3 times as long.

[Bartender]

As Timwhit mentioned, getting the CD-ROM support is critical. If your Windows 98 diskette is a Windows 98 Startup diskette, or if you can make one, then you'll have the necessary ATAPI drivers load for CD-ROM support.

[Adcadet]

oh oh. It asked where the setup file were located (I said the i386 directory) and then it said it couldn't load smartdisk and that I didn't have enough HD space (prolly since I've got Reiser and Linux swap partitions taking up all of my HD space). Do I have to format these over to get the install to work?

[The JoJo]

Yup, format time it is...

Or atleast fdisk time to get a clean disk. You can the format from within the setup program.

[Bartender]

Adcadet, just as a note, it would be best if you had a program that would write zeros to the first few cylinders on the drive. FDISK and FORMAT, or even FDISK /MBR don't always clean the Master Boot Sector. Programs such as Linux and NT write interesting code in their that helps them translate drive capacity up to 8.4 GB, and then they'll of course use drivers to get beyond that.

[Adcadet]

Bartender - which program(s) can I use to write zeros to the front of the drive as suggested?

Oh, and another Summit Pale Ale, please.

[Bartender]

Check if the manufacturer of the drive has one available. I use another called MUD 5.0 (older program), but I don't have it handy at the moment (note to self: put program on website).

[Bartender]

. . . oh, and another Summit Pale Ale is on the way. :D

[Bartender]

Check out this website:
http://rute.sourceforge.net/node21.html

It contains these instructions:


18.5.2 Erasing disks

If you have ever tried to repartition a LINUX disk back into a DOS/Windows disk, you will know that DOS/Windows FDISK has bugs in it that prevent it from recreating the partition table. A quick


dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/hda bs=1024 count=10240



will write zeros to the first 10 megabytes of your first IDE drive. This will wipe out the partition table as well as any file system information and give you a ``brand new'' disk.

[cas]

Bartender - which program(s) can I use to write zeros to the front of the drive as suggested?
You could also use debug.

It seems there is no end to the number of things you can do with debug.

[Tea]

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/zap.exe

Or, if you want to write zeros to the entire drive, rather than just the first 128 sectors where the master boot record and the partition table are, use this one:

http://service.boulder.ibm.com/storage/hddtech/wipe.exe

Syntax: "zap 0" zaps the first 128 sectors of your first drive, "wipe 2" wipes your entire third physical drive. That's just about all there is to it. Don't zap the wrong drive!

[Adcadet]

OK, so I zaped the drive (wrote zeros over the entire thing), and then used Partition Magic to create a FAT32 partition. Rebooted off the Win98 boot disk, and began the WinXP install. After a while it asked me to remove the boot floppy and reboot. I did and it gives me a "error loading operating system". Any idea why?

[Tea]

Hmmm .... A master boot record problem, that much is clear. Is the partition you created active? A non-active primary partition will give you that symptom. (As, of course, will numerous other things, most of which escape me at the moment.) Personally, I never really trust Partition Magic, but that is no doubt mostly just because I have rarely used it. On a day to day production basis we use GDisk - a program which has a horrible command syntax but is very, very fast and (to the best of my knowledge) never makes mistakes. You get it free with ... er .. whatever that partitioning and copying tool is that I don't usually bother to use but comes with GDisk free. Drive Copy, I think. So far as I know, GDisk is freeware - it certainly used to be - but now that Symantec own it, they go out of their way to make it as difficult to get hold of as possible.

But excuse me, I'm rambling.

To activate the partition (why does that word suddenly fill me with replusion? It never used to offend my sensibilities), simply boot any OS you like - DOS 5.0 will do at a pinch - and run FDISK (or whatever the equivalent is in your OS). Mark the FAT32 partition active. Install away. When you are done, you can use LILO or whatever other boot manager you prefer to give yourself multi-boot.

[Tea]

Oh. And the really, really obvious - make sure you have checked your boot sequence in your BIOS. I have been known to have an entire computer in pieces loking for the hardware problem before I remembered to check that.

[Adcadet]

just checked the BIOS. Nope, it's trying to boot off the HD.

[Tea]

Boot off that Win98 boot floppy of yours and run fdisk to make sure the partition is marked A for active, Andrew. If in doubt, also type FDISK /MBR. That can't do any harm, and may be just what you need. - no - wait - you should be running the XP equivalent of that - what ever that is.

Better just check that the partition is active, and then ask someone who understands the ins and outs of XP. A Win 98MBR will almost certainly stuff XP up. The MBR is near enough to common between DOS and Win9X, but NT family stuff is different, as it includes the NT Boot Loader, or whatever it is Microsoft have decided to use instead.

[Adcadet]

Boot off that Win98 boot floppy of yours and run fdisk to make sure the partition is marked A for active, Andrew. If in doubt, also type FDISK /MBR. That can't do any harm, and may be just what you need. - no - wait - you should be running the XP equivalent of that - what ever that is.

Better just check that the partition is active, and then ask someone who understands the ins and outs of XP. A Win 98MBR will almost certainly stuff XP up. The MBR is near enough to common between DOS and Win9X, but NT family stuff is different, as it includes the NT Boot Loader, or whatever it is Microsoft have decided to use instead.

Man, installing Linux over WinXP was a thousand times easier than installing WinXP over Linux.

[Tea]

That's because Microsoft didn't write Linux. Linux works.

[Adcadet]

arrrg!

I now boot off the floppy, it warns me about not having SmartDrive, then begins copying files...then freezes while it says please wait while Setup copies files to your hard disk" yet in the lower right corner no file is listed. My HD activity light is on, but the HD isn't making any noise other than the occasional sound. I reboot without the floppy, tell the PC to run the Windows setup, and it says it can't find the EULA.

WTF?

[Tea]

I'm starting to think that you may have a hardware issue, Adcadet.

I'd boot from floppy and run Zap again. Then boot from the Win XP CD and install from there, using the XP's installation routine's partitioning tool. If you still can't install, then it's hardware: CD drive, cable, the XP CD, hard drive, something like that.

[Cliptin]

It should only be neccessary to fdsik /mbr from the 98 floppy and then boot from the XP cd and install.

All the MS versions use the same MBR since at least 95. The NT/2000/XP specific boot process is dependant on files (ntldr,... ) located in the root of the boot drive.