Rachel’s Blog

Windows XP doesn’t provide Fdisk, but I’ve done an equivalent operation to FDISK /MBR like this:

Configured the Recovery console for automatic administrator login - this was important because there seems to be a bug which requires an admin password to be entered, even when the system doesn’t have one.

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/312149/Then boot up from the Windows XP setup CD, and I chose the ‘R’ Recovery option.

Once in, I ran FIXMBR.

And the PC boots again…

This assumes that you don’t already have a Linux installation on a dual-boot machine that you want to use, and are going to install Linux from scratch. If you do already have a working Linux setup, then you can use it. The CoLinux FAQ explains how to configure coLinux on a dual-boot machine

1. Get a 2nd IP address assigned that you can use on your Windows machine for the colinux interface (assuming you’ve already got one assigned to the main interface)
2. Download colinux-0.6.2.exe from sourceforge onto the Windows machine.
3. Run colinux-0.6.2.exe on the Windows machine
4. By default, this will install into c:\Program Files\coLinux. I prefer it to be in c:\coLinux.
5. The setup program claims it needs 7.6MB for a complete install including root filesystem.
6. You’ll be offered a choice of distributions - choose Debian
7. Decompress the Debian filesystem. You’ll need bunzip2, I used the version from cygwin, but you can, I think, also use the Tugzip Windows program
8. Edit the default.config.xml, and change root_fs to be your unzipped debian filesystem. (If you don’t do this, you’ll get “Device index not specified” when you try to start colinux.
9. I also increase “memory size”.
10. You should now be able to run “colinux-daemon -c default.config.xml” and get a live colinux process.
11. Login as root and change the default root password from “root”
12. Edit /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/resolv.conf to set the interface’s IP address, router and default nameserver.
13. Halt colinux
14. Setup networking. I used a bridge network between my ethernet and the TAP interface created at the time of colinux install, using the native Windows bridging. (You can also use the WinPCAP option)
15. Look for new interface in Control Panel. Mine was called “Local Area Connection”, since I’d renamed the original Ethernet to “Ethernet LAN”.
16. Bridge between this and the external interface
17. Bring up colinux and login as root.
18. Once you know it works, install it as a service.

So now you’ve got a running CoLinux installation running Debian Woody.

Now upgrade Debian Woody to Debian Sid

1. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and change stable to unstable
2. apt-get update
3. apt-get dist-upgrade

Enable “Print Services for Unix” on Windows XP machine and share printer. (I’m not actually sure that this is necessary, it might be a red herring…)

When you add the printer in Ubuntu,

1. Choose “Network Printer” and “Windows Printer (SMB)”
2. put your Workgroup in the Host field
3. Put “guest@<host>/<printer>” in the Printer field (replacing <host> and <printer> with your host & printer names)

So, for example, if your Windows machine was called “Dozer” and your printer was called “LaserPrinter”, you would put “guest@Dozer/LaserPrinter”.

You should not need a name and password for the Windows machine for this to work.

Note: please note that case-sensitivity is important.. e.g. If you think your machine name is “DOMINO”, it should be “Domino” in the config above.

If you install grub, setting it up for a dual boot Linux and WindowsXP, and then you get an “autochk fail” error when you try booting into WindowsXP, check that the Windows partition is not hidden.

If it is, add an “unhide” line before the “root” line in your menu.lst. Like so,

title Windows XP Professional
unhide (sd0,1)
root (sd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1


This example shows a SCSI disk with WindowsXP on the 2nd partition.