hey all, Im trying to dual boot ubuntu + WinXP [SP2] Ive got a MSI K8T Neo2 - FIR motherboard, which came with 2 floppys disks with SATA + Raid drivers on them..... i larthed cos it came with floppys. I now know why it came with the floppys :'( Does anyone have/know where to find the drivers i need (a copy of the sata floppy woudl be preferable). Also, last time i attempted a dual boot with windoze + linux, windoze got corrupted and failed to boot (it said soem driver was missing, cant remember the details)..... which order should i install my OS's? *edit* sorry sabashuali, i did forget to mention the problem.... I've lost the floppys that came with the motherboard, im not the tidy'est of people */edit*
Hi Firstly - Are you saying you have no floppy drive? I did not understand from the post what was the problem there. The problem is that when you start the windows installation (you know when you pres the F6 bastard?) it automaticaly looks for the floppy drive. Later on when it is time to load the SATA drivers it will re-call the floppy drive. My way around this was to connect a USB floppy drive. Worked a charm. However, you might be able to do this with a USB memory pen. Not sure how but you might..... If it is possible just copy the conetnts of the floppy to the pen. Second - Welcome to the sad club of dual-booting Ubuntu and XP...... Are they going to live on the same drive or on separate drives? All my attempts to dual-boot the two using the SATA drive failed miserably. But then again I was using separate drives. These are my findings. Please note that I could be talking straight out of my harris but that’s how it worked for me: Ubuntu’s location has to be on the first drive preferably an IDE one. If you are using the same drive than the first primary partition. However, if the first drive is SATA, Ubuntu is not happy…. Do not know why. For some reason it favours the IDE drives over the SATA… Maybe someone with proper understanding of Linux boot-loaders can shed a bit of light on this. [ot]This is one major area where Mandriva beats Ubuntu, no sweat! But back to that later. [/ot] That way when you install grub just hit ‘enter’ and off you go. Believe me I tried so many combinations, it hurts me to remember. The drive will have to be partitioned before you start into two primary partitions. You could use the windows ‘partiotioner’ when you start the windows installation. Install Windows into the second primary partition (NTFS). With windows which is prone to corruptions, you will be wise to have one Primary partition for the OS (I found 20GB more than enough – remember you need some space for programs….) and then either another primary or a logical partition for data. That way if something goes kuput you just reinstall windows on the 'system' partition, theoretically, without touching any data on the second partition. If you want to save your self some hassle, work with two drives. One for Linux and one for Windows. It is literally like having two computers into one. Where was I? I am writing from work and I get distracted all the time…. Don’t they know there are far better things? Yes, Install Windows first so Ubuntu can find it and install grub to include your Windows installation. My set-up is as follows: 1st drive – IDE (Master) with Ubuntu. 2nd Drive – IDE (Slave) with XP 3rd Drive – SATA data space for Ubuntu (formatted in RaiserFS and not accessible to Windows. That way the other users, who for some reason refuse to see Linux as an option, have a safe haven…). I got to this set up after a number of combinations. To be fair, I never actually tried to install both on the same drive. Logically I think you are better to have them on separate drives. In case of hardware failure you always have one drive to work with. It all changes with Mandriva! Mandriva has a kick ass GUI partitioner which even a noob like me can work. Now that is saying something. You can put Mandriva on any drive you want and it just works (make sure you install the boot loader into the first drive or the computer will not know where to start from). This is one of the reasons I think I am going back to Mandriva for good. I was hopping between the two lately but weighing the pros and cons, I think I prefer Mandriva. This will be my future set-up 1st drive – SATA with Mandriva. 2nd Drive – IDE (Master) with XP. 3rd Drive – IDE (Slave) data space to service both installations. That is unless I get an additional drive. Hope this give you some idea on the different options…. Sorry to go on but unfortunately dual-booting Ubuntu and XP is not that straight forward… not when it includes SATA set-up…. Good luck
I only have one HDD, a SATA (200 GB Seagate ), i *could* steal a 160 GB HDD from my other P) computer..... but then it doesnt have a hdd Im normally a big gamer, and ive had little sucess getting my games to run in linux as im having troble with graphics and sound drivers, and also a few with cedega i aint played ANY of them in nearly 3 weeks :crying: (i did play codename gordon for awhile tho ) anyone got any sucesses with ubuntu + XP or any idears for a work around? [that was quite a post sabashuali! thanks for your time)
ok, ive downloaded the drivers from the MSI site..... well, im hoping that they will work the probelm is i dont have a computer with a cd AND a floppy drive in the house
I am not sure what else you can try. Unfortunately, Windows looks for the floppy. Another + for Linux distros like Ubuntu and Mandrive (maybe others...), they already have everything on the install image.... how ****en hard can it be to put it on the Windows install disk? Oh, that's an idea..... have you ever created your own bootable CD? You could 'borrow' the data from your windows disk and implement it in your own 'swiss army knife' type install CD. Then you can add the sata drivers to it as well. Maybe that will work? Have a read here - http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ or here - http://www.nu2.nu/bootcd/ Otherwise just google for "boot cd".
ok, have you ever put something in a safe place i just found the :swear: floppy that i have been looking for for like 3 weeks! (and i wasnt even looking ffs!) thanks for your help tho, the UBCD should come in use (mainly for the maintance toolz) thanks guys.
