Dual Boot Basics

I'm not a complete nooB with Linux, I would say novice-to-intermediate fits. Here's thequestion:

I have a home network. One node is configured for dual boot with XP Home and Mandrake 10.1. That node has a single physical drive partitioned approprately by the Mandrake installation. The boot manager is Grub or Lilo (forget which).

I have a second node (my main box) that I want to install Mandrake on. That node is a W2K Pro box with two phyical HDD's (C: and F: in Windoze parlance). I want to make this a dual boot unit also but I want Mandrake on the second physical drive. Can I do that and have the boot manager installed on the primary drive or do both OS's have to reside on the boot drive with the boot manager?

Thanks.

It's perfectly fine to install Mandrake on the other HDD and then use a bootloader like Grub and configure it to boot. There should be no problem's as long as you configure it correctly.

and by "configure it correctly", the meaning is just go through the setup and choose the appropriate options. i have 2 physical drives and the 80 gig master is running XP and the 160 gig slave is running FC3. so i wouldn't worry about the boot loader, and let the setup do what you want it to.

Sounds logical and comforting. I have backups for even more comfort.

Thanks.

On a related note... if I was planning on setting up a dual boot Linux (Fedora)/Windows XP Pro system, what is the proper order of installation (or does it matter?)

Windows then Linux or Linux then Windows?

You have to install Windows first, then Linux. Linux can install a boot loader that will detect Windows and let you boot to it, but Windows doesn't have such a thing as they're not going to endorse a dual boot system.. especially one that doesn't have ONLY their product running on it

That is exactly what I wanted to know! Thanks so much.

awesome. any time

also thank you... about to dual boot xpp and mandrake 10.1 as well.

Here's something else you may want to consider.

I have a second hard drive in my laptop -- both 80G.

I run both FreeBSD AND Windows XP (corporate decision) on it using VMWare.

Given enough memory, it's certainly plausible and VMWare just released the GX version for free.
If for no other reason, it's handy having my VMWare session open up with my Unix OS. Do they both vie for processor and memory when running ... yes. Can I do very intensive things while both are running ... depends. It's not a great solution, but it is interesting.

Thanks, this narrows down the obvious hassles i may have missed when i go for my Xp, Server 2003 ,Fedora 3 combo install tonight..

If only thier was a stable Mac o/s on amd architecture, then i would have the whole field.

For verification.

I Shouldnt have any probs if i have xp and server one 1st hd (will install these first) , then Fedora and a swap on another HD.
Or more to the point , will i enter trouble if the swap for fedora is on a separate HD from the os, and will moving the page files to a different hd (win ones) cause any conflicts..

Advice?

I need these for school to get familar if your wondering why i need them all on the go.

i'm not sure about the page files but having the swap partition on a separate hdd shouldn't cause a problem. it'll get mounted just like all of your other partitions.
may i ask, though, why you're choosing FC3? FC5 was just released the 20th of this month (which is what i'm using to type this) and personally i enjoy it much more than FC3 (although FC3 was the first one i used so i'll always <3 it, lol).

i'm using fedora cause i got a nice dvd for 64 bit at the local electronics store,ill just play with that for a while, i've heard that its more stable than fed4 and there is a lot of support on the net.

No real other valid reasons.

eh...i'm not sure which version is more stable, but there is a lot of support on the net. such examples would be:
http://www.fedoraforum.org
http://www.fedorafaq.org
http://stanton.finley.net

Hey all. Well the multi os install went fine, and its been working a treat ..untill today.As i was trying to load server2003 i got a message that the ntoskrnl.exe was missing.So i installed it again,but its still wont load, i tried a fixboot, no joy. I am hesitant to use fixmbr becasue have read that it messes with the grub loader and then ill lose access to my Fedora 3 and Xp os's, which are working fine.Anyone have any suggestions about how to get server going again?

Thanks.