Eee PC 901 – 1000 Dual Boot Xandros and Windows XP
Posted by troycoon on 06 Aug 2008 at 07:09 pm | Tagged as: Eee PC
Michael has put up a post on how to dual boot your 901 or 1000, so as a form of quality control I followed his instructions. He has the 901 and I have the 1000, which has a larger hard drive, so I wanted to try something different. I wanted to put the Xandros system partition on the 8GB SSD which is /dev/sda, and a 20GB~ish Xandros user partition on the 30GB SSD as /dev/sdb1 and an 8GB WinXP partition on the end of the drive as /dev/sdb2. Well it didn’t work. I used Michael’s instructions and successfully backed up my WinXP partition, but no matter what I tried, I could not get it to boot from /dev/sdb2. I tried rebuilding and reinstalling GRUB. I tried Super Grub Disk. I tried installing Ubuntu, which allowed me to see the Windows partition, but it still would not boot. I might add that Xandros would boot the whole time. So my solution: I moved Windows to the second hard drive with its Master Boot Record and expanded it to take up the entire drive, so when it boots I hit escape and boot from the second drive. It works, WOOT. I then reinstalled Xandros using the disk that came with my computer. The only thing you have to do to keep it from overwriting the second drive is when it says /dev/sdb1 is currently formatted …blah..blah JUST SAY NO. It will finish setting up Xandros just on the first drive and you are good to go. If anyone knows how I can get XP to boot from /dev/sdb2 I would be very happy to hear from you.
Hello,
I have an EEE PC 1000h with Windows XP pre-installed and I have the Xandros ISO ready to install. I’ve heard that it’ll completely wipe EVERYTHING I have on my current drive (including Windows XP) so please could you explain how I could go about install Xandros using the ISO restore disk onto one of the 40GB drives (or split it down to 20GB so I can have Ubuntu too) and keep Windows XP being deleted or becomming corrupted.
Thanks,
Jack De La Mare
You might try installing windows to the first HD and then use the DD command in my post and move it to the second hard drive. Then live boot Ubuntu and repartition the first HD for you Xandros distro, then reinstall Xandros and when it asks you if you want to use the second drive say no. Since I have a eee1000 and not an eee1000h I’m not sure how well any of this will work. Once you have Xandros and Windows working you can resize the windows drive with Ubuntu and install. With the 1000 I had to be sure and put windows at the beginning of the second drive in order to get it to work. Like I said I’m not sure how this may work on you computer so USE WITH CAUTION. I would be sure and back up any important data and be sure I had the windows reinstall disk handy in case this frags your drive. GOOD LUCK
Thanks for the reply. I now have Xandros on my EEE PC and am awaiting to install XP. The 1000h 80GB drive is split into 2×40GB drives so I believe that I could install XP onto one of them, but I don’t think it will work as it apparently isn’t really partitioned.
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I’m going to ask around a bit more as I do not want to corrupt or ruin my EEE PC. For now sticking with Xandros is fine but in due time I hope to have XP installed, and then Ubuntu at a later date.
Thanks for the help, and if you stumple accross anything please let me know
Hi, i just finished isntalling xp w xandros… i isntalled xandros, used a linux ‘rescue’ disk called SYSTEMRESCUECD.. and used apartition image feature and backed up the system and user partitions, installed windows, booted it for it to finish installation(if it even matters to do so) used the systemrescuecd and partitioned the two partitions, copied them back over, reinstalled grub to the MBR(routed back to the hd0,1) edit grub.conf to changed paritions (0×80,1) instead of “..,0″ and in the conf in grub.conf specifies /dev/sda1(shouldbe sda2 now) also edit fstab… windows boots fine.. now my prob is getting xandros to recognize the ‘user’ partition… its a hidden setting some where, but i’ll find it by the end of the day
thomas
thomas@reddn.com
I have a 900 EEE pc.
I’ve set the Linuxpartition (4G) to “Not instald.
I’ve boot with a USB-stick and run Fdisk to make a Dos partition (Fat32 but NTFS will do also)
Then very inportant give Fdisk /MBR to make the masterbootrecord ready for Dos.
run winsetup from the I386 map from another USB-stick.
It run good. If I want my Linux back I go into the Bios and set the first drive to Auto.