-----Original Message----- From: centos-bounces@centos.org [mailto:centos-bounces@centos.org] On
Behalf
Of Robert Heller Sent: Thursday, May 14, 2009 5:03 PM To: CentOS mailing list Cc: CentOS mailing list Subject: Re: [CentOS] Dual-booting CentOS and WinXP
The most curious thing happened now, I get a blank screen after the
Windows
installer screen saying something about "Setting up install
procedure..."
just at the beginning. That is to say, this happens only if the hd with CentOS is connected to power. If I disconnect the power connector to
the
CentOS drive, the Windows installer happily goes on.
Is this to be expected, that Windows won't install if it sees a hd with another OS as master?
It's a known issue - I've seen it affecting other distro's (Fedora in my case). It's a Windows XP thing, not specific to the distro, and only affects WinXP afaik (doesn't affect Win2K, couldn't care less about Vista). I first came across it trying to install WinXP on a system that had previously had Fedora on it and the installer hangs at a black screen. The "solution" is to do as you've done and disconnect the drive.
In the OP's case, this would mean making the disk with Linux installed the 'slave' (/dev/hdb) and the new disk (for MS-Windows) the 'master' (/dev/hda). The OP would then have to boot up with a rescue disk to fix the /etc/fstab file (unless it uses labeled file systems) and re-install the boot loader.
Thanks for the confirmation all. I'll try switching the master/slave settings.
Luckily I'm still at the testing phase, to see how things'll go smoothest, before I go live so to speak.