Dual Booting RedHat 7.3 and Windows98

by Marion Bates <mbates at whoopis.com>

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There are several ways. This is the one I have used with success many times.

WARNING: THIS PROCEDURE WILL ERASE THE CONTENTS OF YOUR HARD DISK!!!

1. Boot RH cd, choose to manually partition with fdisk.

2. Print partition table, erase any existing partitions. Make FOUR NEW partitions, all PRIMARY.

1 - 50 MB Linux -- /boot
2 - 256 MB (or 2x RAM) -- swap (type 82)
3 - Approx. half the drive -- type "c" (Win FAT 32)
4 - Rest of drive -- "extended" then choose type 83 (it will then be labeled hda5 inside of hda4, 4 and 5 will have the same starting and ending blocks)

It should look something like this when you're done. Remember that 4 and 5 will have the same starting and ending blocks, and will be the same size:

/dev/hda1 	50M  	83	Linux
/dev/hda2 	256M +	82	swap
/dev/hda3 	8000M 	c 	Win95 FAT 32 (LBA)
/dev/hda4 	8000M 	5 	Extended
/dev/hda5 	8000M 	83 	Linux

Write partition table and exit fdisk.

3. Click "Back" and run disk druid. Make hda1 be /boot and make it be ext3, not vfat. Do NOT format hda3. Also make / be hda5 and ext3.

4. Let RH format swap and /. Install Linux, choose to install LILO on Master Boot Record. Make a boot disk. It finishes and all is well. It boots and the only lilo choice is "linux."

5. Boot Win98 CD, let it format C. (This will temporarily overwrite LILO such that you can't boot Linux anymore. Don't panic.) Finish installing Windows, it will need to reboot like 50 times, whatever.

6. When Windows is really done, reboot off your boot floppy (or off the bootable RH 7.3 CD and go into rescue mode). Edit /etc/lilo.conf. Add this:

	other=/dev/hda3
	label=dos

(and change the default boot image if you want it to boot into Windows by default. The label can be anything, you may prefer "windows" instead of "dos" -- it's what you'll see in the lilo menu whenever you boot this machine). Save changes and run /sbin/lilo. Make sure it has no errors. It should "add" both linux and dos, with an asterisk next to whichever one is default.

You're done. Reboot and you should get both linux and dos as boot options under lilo. Pick on or the other...it should work.

Tip: From within Linux, you can mount /dev/hda3 and get at your Windows files. But Windows can't see the Linux part.