On Sunday 18 January 2004 12:47 pm, Stephen P. Molnar, Ph.D. wrote:
I currently have two computers, a tower and a laptop, which dual boot v9.0 and Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional using the GRUB boot loader. I'm getting ready to upgrade W2000 to Windows XP Professional and would like to know what alligators are out there in the swamp just waiting to rise up and nip me? In particular, am I going to foul up anything with regard to booting?
Thanks in advance.
Of course you are going to foul up booting, it goes with the territory. Before you start, understand how M$ boots and how Linux boots on your setup and make sure that you have an alternative means of booting Linux [floppy, boot CD] to be able to log on as root. All an M$ install does is rewrite the partition table, so that the M$ partition always boots and bypasses GRUB etc. Which causes absolute horror and shock as countless messages on this list and countless other lists will demonstrate. When you are done installing M$, go to its partition management [not sure what it is in XP] and set the partition with GRUB as the active partition. Or boot Linux as you will already have practiced, and reinstall GRUB. No big deal, if you understand how it works in the first place, but a nightmare if you install XP and try to understand a setup you can no longer access. Vince