[CentOS] Dual boot box: WinXP & CentOS 5: Impossible to restoreWinXP?

Wed Nov 21 14:15:47 UTC 2007
Lanny Marcus <lannyma at gmail.com>

On Tueday, 20 November 2007, "Ross S. W. Walker" <rwalker at medallion.com> wrote:
<snip>
>I should have asked how big your setup was currently.

The HD is only 40 GB on my box, a low end Dell Dimension 2400 (2.6 GHz
Celeron) I won in a raffle.  After I get this one up and running, I am
going to switch wife and daughter's boxes, and redo them completely.
Wife's current box has an 80 GB HD, which will give me a lot more room
to experiment with VMware Server, which is something I want to learn
about and use, until we get a box that is Xen capable..

>Oh well, yes the Windows apps take a while to install, been there myself.

Been there and done that? I have huge appreciation, for the large
number of packages that come from Upstream and are included in CentOS
and the speed with which I can install the OS and so much stuff. And,
for an example, the tools included, that would permit me to repair the
WinXP problem, from the Linux side of the box, as you explained.  To
say nothing of my appreciation for the Developers of CentOS and the
others who make this such a wonderful mailing list. I'm an old retired
Assembly Language programmer (started with IBM 360/65) and I never
worked with Unix, so this is a brand new world for me and one that I
regret I did not work in, professionally.

>If I were to re-do the whole drive, not knowing it's size I might do
it as such:
<snip>
>You can then install Windows from within vmware by making /dev/sdc a
raw disk for vmware. Once it's installed you could add an entry in
>grub to boot into it.

I'm going to RTFM and I think this time around, make it dual boot
again and also try to install Windows within VMware, as you explain.
Next time, I will hopefully have enough confidence in my ability to do
this properly, that I will only install CentOS and then install
Windows within VMware. Thanks much! Lanny