Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 18:57:29 -0500 (EST) From: Jerry McAllister <jerrymc@clunix.cl.msu.edu> To: nalists@scls.lib.wi.us (Greg Barniskis) Cc: David Larkin <david.larkin@djl.co.uk> Subject: Re: Dual boot with XP Message-ID: <200503012357.j21NvUJ08336@clunix.cl.msu.edu> In-Reply-To: <4224F8F2.7000004@scls.lib.wi.us> from "Greg Barniskis" at Mar 01, 2005 05:21:22 PM
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> > David Larkin wrote: > > I'm going to by a laptop with wondoze XP pre installed soon. > > > > The machine will have one IDE disk. > > > > Am I right in thinking that I can install FreeBSD also without having > > to re-install XP ? > > > > I"ve searched the mailing list and found info on how to achieve dual boot > > with multiple disks< but how do i go about this, which I guess is a common > > task ? > > > > Is there a tutorial out there in cyberspace somewhere ???? > > Jerry gave a pretty complete answer. I have two cents to throw in: > > Consider reinstalling Windows instead of futzing with shrinking the > partition to make room for FreeBSD. No question that it can be done, > but as noted it may cost you for some commercial partition mgmt. > software for NTFS. But that's not my reason. Partition Magic was about $69 at Best Buy the last time I noticed it. Amazon lists it for $21.99. There also seems to be a Norton Partition Magic. Maybe Symantec either bought it or is reselling it. Interesting perspective below. MS sure does come with a lot of unfriendly crap you might not want. But, you will still want to make sure and install MS first and THEN FreeBSD. That is because of you install FreeBSD first and then MS, it will overwrite your MBR with its own and won't be able to boot FreeBSD. You will have to get out the fixit disk and tink with it. It is a repairable situation but annoying and an unnecessary extra bother. ////jerry > The vendor is highly likely to load your laptop's installation of > Windows with all kinds of unwanted cruft, including AOL and > Earthlink dialers, scary automated "helper" software, and gawd knows > what else. If you install Windows, you get to control it (to some > small extent). Would you rather have to go and weed out the > bloatware that you don't want, or would you rather build up a box > from nothing, including only what you do want? The latter is more > "the BSD way" and that's why I usually choose to reinstall Windows > in these cases. > > You'll want to fire up Windows as delivered by the vendor at least > once and poke around in it awhile, particularly if it comes with any > "free" stuff you want, like an antivirus subscription or what not -- > sometimes these installations come with serial numbers "embedded" by > the vendor, that you must use to register the package before you'll > be able to successfully reinstall them from CD after reinstalling > Windows. > > > -- > Greg Barniskis, Computer Systems Integrator > South Central Library System (SCLS) > Library Interchange Network (LINK) > <gregb at scls.lib.wi.us>, (608) 266-6348 > _______________________________________________ > freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list > http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions > To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-questions-unsubscribe@freebsd.org" >
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