How to dual-boot Windows 2000/XP and Fedora

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If you have two hard disks, you may want to give Free Software a chance. You will be able to install Windows 2000/XP and Fedora Core 3 on two different hard drives, sharing the same primary channel on the motherboard.

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Procedure

You will obviously need the Windows 2000 and Fedora Core CDs. You can obtain Windows 2000 or XP from any software reseller (chances are it came preinstalled with your computer anyway). Since Fedora is Free Software, you can download it for free from http://fedora.redhat.com . If you are on a slow connection, you can also ask a Linux User Group to mail the CDs for you. They will often do this free of charge, asking you to pay only for the media (the CDs) if you are asking for many CDs.

  1. The first thing to do is set up the Windows hard drive as a master on the primary channel, and the second hard drive as the slave of the primary channel. You should refer to your motherboard's documentation for details on how to do this.
  2. Now boot from the first Fedora CD (or from the Fedora DVD). Follow the install instructions and choose "Automatic partitioning" when asked. You should choose to install Fedora on /hdb (or /sdb).
  3. You can choose whatever bootloader you want, but you will probably want Grub.
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Notes

It is very important that you do not install Fedora on the first hard drive (/hda, /sda). This will surely cause your Windows installation not to boot anymore, and may lead to some serious data loss. If you have done this by mistake though, you can boot from a DOS boot disk and run: 

fdisk /mbr

to restore it. You can then reinstall Fedora on the second hard drive.

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