Re: Can Grub start Windows XP from "other" partition

[Felix Miata]

On 2012-11-17 01:10 (GMT+0100) Ulf Zibis composed:

> I have an old bad running WinXP installation, which was installed on partition 
> 1 as C:.
> Now I want to move this installation to another partition and make a fresh 
> WinXP installation on
> partition 1.
> For some reasons, I want to have the possibility to run the old installation 
> later. I believe, that
> I can run it, if I manually "hide" the 1. partition and mark the 2. as 
> active/boot, so Windows will
> guess the 2. partition as C:.
> I Grub smart enough to do that for me when booting the old Windows partition 
> from the 2. partition?
>
> Ideally I would like to move the old WinXP installation to a "logical" 
> partition. Would that also work?
> So my preferred partitioning would be like:
> Primary partition 1: new Windows XP installation
> Primary partition 2: Thinkpad Recovery (physically at the end of the of the 
> harddrive)
> Primary partition 3: Ubuntu
> Extended partition 4:
> Logical partition 5: Ubuntu swap
> Logical partition 6: Data
> Logical partition 7: Backup
> Logical partition 8: old bad Windows XP installation (Copy from originally C:)

Windows primary partitions cannot be "moved" except via sophisticated 
understanding and working knowledge of partitioning and the Windows registry.

Windows needs a primary to be C:, but it needn't be "installed" to C:. What 
you can do is designate the new installation be "installed" to a logical, as 
long as there is a C:/primary to boot from. If there are no other 
Windows-native partition types, the logical will be D:, where the new XP 
would be installed and run from after booting from C:, much like Linux can 
have a separate /boot instead of having everything on /.

If you now have Grub on the MBR, the Windows installation will overwrite it 
with standard PC MBR code. Before starting another Windows installation if 
you install Grub to your Ubuntu / partition, then either of Windows or Linux 
can chainload the other via the standard MBR code Windows will install, as 
spelled out on http://fm.no-ip.com/PC/install-doz-after.html which should 
help understanding multiboot with more than one Windows as well as with Linux.

See also:
http://old-en.opensuse.org/Bugs/grub#How_does_a_PC_boot_.2F_How_can_I_set_up_a_working_GRUB.3F
--
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 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata  ***  http://fm.no-ip.com/