Can't install XP as a second OS [SOLVED]

scottneh · Last edited by scottneh on Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:09 pm; edited 1 time in total

Not sure if this is the appropriate place for this but there seem to be allot of sharp people here. I'm trying to set up XP as a second OS for a dual boot. There are allot of HOWTOs for this and I'm fairly comfortable doing it butthe issue I'm having is that I can't get XP to install and I'm curious if it is a hardware setup issue.

My has five drives which are configured as 1 IDE (160GB) Linux OS, 1 SATA (150GB, 10,000 RPM) for programs, 2 SATA (1.5TB) mirrored RAID set for data and 1 IDE (320GB) dedicated to windows for all the stuff that doesn't run on Linux.

I installed the new 320GB drive and booted into the window's XP CD setup program, I get as far as the partition screen and select a partition. Then it says that the unallocated space does not have a windows partition and needs to be partitioned and I let it do so (expected). It goes back to the menu to select a space to install XP. I select the drive just partitioned and if comes back with an error saying that the partition is not a windows partiton...the partition that windows just created.

I have tried using a boot disk to boot into dos and partition and format the drive (didn't work) and I just go done putting the drive onto a windows machine and partitioning it and formating for NTFS (still didn't work). The only thin I can think of at this point is that the xp installation CD either doesn't like installing onto a slave drive or doesn't like being installed from a SATA CD-ROM

Anyone seen an issue like this before?

Sorry to keep posting with what probably seems like mundane issues but I'm getting there.

Scott

blueflame · Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 6:57 am Post subject:

As far as I remember Windows always wants to be installed on the first primary partition of the first hard disk. Microsoft still expects that Windows is going to be the only OS installed and is nowhere near as flexible as Linux in this regard. You'll probably have to connect that IDE hard disk to the firs IDE interface cable and make sure you have a primary partition available.

ichbins · n00b Joined: 25 Mar 2008 Posts: 40

I would disconnect ALL drive excepting the drive you want to put windows on it.

than normally install windows ...

If you have a working windows on any partition , its just a grub/lilo thing to boot from it

scottneh · Posted: Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:09 pm Post subject:

Ok, so I solved this issue. Although this forum isn;t really for windows I'll put the solution down sice its a good piece of information. Looks like Windows didn;t like being installed from a SATA CD-ROM. I disconnected all of the SATA devices and the Linux HD, installed Windows on the remaining hard drive with a spare IDE CD-ROM. Older Windows CDs prior to SP2 will still not work on my machine so I had to use a CD that had SP3 on it. Eveything installed fine after a little tinkering with the grub.conf file the dual boot is now working properly.

Thanks for the comments