multi booting

[asteroid]

I have my system with two drive 120gb with XP and a 40Gb with Ubuntu Linux

question, how can you change the boot menu you get, to chose which operating system,

at the moment I have to be really quick to press the down arrow to chose xP as it only give you 4/5 seconds then boots into Linux if nothing is chosen.


Im going to retire off the 40gb drive and get a 250+ drive and chose between XP, Vista and Ubuntu (will get the newest distro tonight)

[Taxation]

isnt there an option in the bios which can make the boot process slower, so it could give you more time to switch to the other boot drive

[anthonygriff]

The settings you are after are based in linux. Once linux is up and running the boot settings can be changed so that you can even choose xp as the default os to boot into. Unfortunately as I've not used linux for yonks I can't remember how you find the settings. I just remember that it is one of the preferences you choose from one of the start menu options.

[illusionalSin]

your looking at grub or lilo, most linux installers now will give you the option of whether to add/choose default partition

[Nox]

yep, its in the linux boot loader, instructions will be dependeant on which one you installed.

Nox

[asteroid]

yes it had grub on it, I formatted the 40gb drive with linux and now the machine wouldnt boot at all :o(

I was playing around with a boot CD with various utils and managed to get XP booting again fine but as its slow and flakey I need to back up and reinstall.

Gonna have the new drive with XP / Vista beta / Ubuntu and the 120gb drive with some back up images on.

[Taxation]

http://www.overclock3d.net/articles.php ... _and_linux (http://www.overclock3d.net/articles.php?type=3&id=51&page=1&desc=dual_boot_raid_windows_and_linux)
could this help

[g7rpo]

Thinking about it couldnt this be something do with active partitions?

The boot drive loads Grub (I presume) which is the linux loader that superceeded Lilo and that then deals with the loading of the chosen OS

Only way I have seen to do it without a boot loader (sucessfully and without a booting utility) is to install 1 OS on 1 drive, remove it and then install the 2nd OS on another drive then replace both drives and use the Boot option in most BIOSs and choose the physical drive you want to boot from.

[RichisQuick]

I've managed to run Windows - NT 4.0, 2000 and Xp on the same hdd using the partitions made, however you must make sure that if you do this you install it in order of make, otherwise the pc wont let you install older software than the current for some reason... ive used a windows 95 startup disk with DOS to create the partitions... worked fine :>

[beardyman]

I have my system with two drive 120gb with XP and a 40Gb with Ubuntu Linux

question, how can you change the boot menu you get, to chose which operating system,

at the moment I have to be really quick to press the down arrow to chose xP as it only give you 4/5 seconds then boots into Linux if nothing is chosen.


Im going to retire off the 40gb drive and get a 250+ drive and chose between XP, Vista and Ubuntu (will get the newest distro tonight)

A typical lilo.conf file
_________________________
boot=/dev/hda
map=/boot/map
install=/boot/boot.b
prompt
timeout=50
message=/boot/message
lba32
default=linux

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.4.0-0.43.6
label=linux
initrd=/boot/initrd-2.4.0-0.43.6.img
read-only
root=/dev/hda5

other=/dev/hda1
label=dos
_________________________________

change the timeout.

if its grub, edit grub.conf, it too has a timeout setting.

and if you format the drive with the bootloader on.....no...it won't boot.....
:shock:

if you can get into a rescue environment, you can restore a bootloader, but naturally this would be a generic version, and you would need to input the info for all the other OS's you had installed (boot drives etc)