[CentOS] Dual-booting CentOS and WinXP

Thu May 14 15:02:59 UTC 2009
Robert Heller <heller at deepsoft.com>

At Thu, 14 May 2009 15:41:02 +0100 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:

> 
> Sorin Srbu wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > 
> > You know how I asked about procedures to build a dual-boot system with
> > CentOS and WinXP a while ago? Well, I I've begun with a test machine.
> > 
> > What I had from start was a working CentOS 5.3 32b system. What I did was to
> > just add another empty drive configured as slave and then boot from the
> > Windows install cd.
> > 
> > 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?
> > 
> > Thanks for any hints.
> > 
> 
> 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. 
> If it's a single drive system, then install Windows first for dual 
> booting, or if you just want to reinstall Windows over the top of a 
> previous Linux installation then remove all Linux partitions with fdisk 
> first.

Windows NT 4.0's installer also is wonky if the first disk is not
available for the MS-Windows install.  I had this problem with a SCSI
system and ended up re-numbering the drives making the disk with the
existing Linux install drive #1 (/dev/sdb) and the 'new' drive for
MS-Windows NT 4.0 drive #0 (/dev/sda).  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.

> 
> 
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>                                                                                                                                

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Robert Heller             -- 978-544-6933
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