installing Windows AFTER gentoo...

Message

eliemedeiros · Post by **eliemedeiros** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 4:56 pm

Has anyone got experience of doing this? Aside from a few muttered warnings of "unpredictable things will happen" and "mayhem will ensue", I haven't found much about anyone doing this.

From what I understand, Windows will overwrite Grub's MBR when it installs, so I will need to re-install Grub on the MBR as described in the install docs using the LiveCD once I finish with installing Windows.

I was going to back up my /boot partition (32megs) just in case anything went wrong.

Any other suggestions?

Elie

subzero349 · Post by **subzero349** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 5:13 pm

I've never tried it before...

But I think what you said will work...
After installing windows you should just be able to boot from your gentoo cd and fix up the boot loader...

THis is just a word of incouragement to try it! But back up all your stuff first

Good luck

michaelb · Post by **michaelb** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 5:17 pm

The main reason for the dire warnings about installing Windows after linux on a disk is that the Win version of fdisk doesn't understand Linux partitions. Some folks have had a bad experience with Windows b0rking their partition tables during its install process. It's always a good idea to back up important data when you are going to be poking around in the partition table anyway, whether you're installing Linux, Windows, MacOS or whatever....

Zuti · Post by **Zuti** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 5:33 pm

I have installed Windows after gentoo, but I have 2 hdd's (2x 80 GB).

My gentoo is on hda (prim master) and windows on a 10 GB partition on my secundary master disk(hdc1).

Trick is to disable your primary master in BIOS, install Windows, do some grub hacking in order to trick windows and you 're all set.

BTW, I'm using windows mainly to play some new games. Thats about it. You could try vmware in order to emulate a windows OS (im using vmware, its great!).

subzero349 · Post by **subzero349** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 5:43 pm

Ah yes... what version of windows are you intalling?

I know with Os's like windows 98 it will attempt to "fix" your partitions (even though you know they are linux and are NOT broken). If it tries to "fix" your partitions you are in big trouble because it will just kill your linux partitions...

This same thing happens if you try and install win98 and you have a NTFS partition (that it won't understand). By fixing it it just blows it away...

I don't think you should have this trouble with win2000 or winxp...

revertex · Post by **revertex** » Fri Feb 06, 2004 7:03 pm

i did it before just hiding my linux partitions.

You can try grub or smartbootmanager to hide/unhide.

Drk korrupted · Post by **Drk korrupted** » Tue Feb 10, 2004 7:49 am

With XP I had no problems doing this....actually, for some reason my installs weren't going smoothly until I tried this method, for some strange reason....but yeah, I installed Gentoo, then Windows XP, then booted into Gentoo using the liveCD and installed GRUB to my MBR again; worked like a charm.

Boris27 · Post by **Boris27** » Tue Feb 10, 2004 8:01 am

It can be done, but WinXP insists on being the first partition on the drive....

Well, thats no problem.

I have it setup like this:

WinXP - 10GB
Data/movies/music - 90GB
Boot - 50 MB
Swap - 128MB
Gentoo - 20 GB

Works like a charm.