Keith Devens .com - Weblog: How to install Windows after installing Linux

Saturday, June 25, 2005

How to install Windows after installing Linux

Installing Windows after Linux is super easy:

When you install Linux and set up your partitions, make sure you format the partition you intend to install Windows on as FAT32. Don't leave it unformatted.
Go ahead and install Windows onto the FAT32 partition you set up. The installer will give you the option of reformatting it as NTFS.
To get Linux back, boot up a Knoppix CD, type grub, and at the prompt type root (hd0,0) (assuming your primary drive, first partition, is where GRUB lives), and then setup (hd0).

That's it. You'll now have to A. add an item to menu.lst for Windows (I'll update this post with instructions for that in a bit), and B. change fstab to not try to mount your Windows partition as FAT32 anymore if it had been.

Update: Went to sleep... the lines in menu.lst should be:

title Windows XP

root (hd0,3)

chainloader +1

makeactive

boot

I have Windows on my fourth partition, hence the root (hd0,3).

Permalink | 5 Comments | Tags: Programming | id 7052

23:45 (utc-5)
edited: 2005-06-26 10:54 (utc-5)

Comments

Michael wrote:

Wouldn't it have been easier to just Linux first?

∴ Michael | 27-Jun-2005 9:03am est | #7769

Huh?

∴ Keith | 27-Jun-2005 9:24am est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #7771

I believe Michael means installing Windows first...

And in that case, he's right: the Linux installer (and the Linux bootloaders) do a better job of handling multiple operating systems than Microsoft's. But your method seems to work.

John Richards wrote:

Both ways can work.
But of course GRUB, bootloader is better.

∴ John Richards | 6-Jul-2005 8:47pm est | #7851

But of course GRUB, bootloader is better.

Of course, as I explained above, I'm using GRUB, not the Windows bootloader.

∴ Keith | 6-Jul-2005 9:37pm est | http://keithdevens.com/ | #7853

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