dual booting XP and Linux

[Aaron Konstam]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 01:25 +0100, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> Washington, CJ (OCTO) wrote:
> 
> > I found it easier to let the WinXP boot manager chain load GRUB
> > than the other way 'round. MicroSoft products like to be in
> > charge. While GRUB+Linux is not a good match, it is a reasonable
> > match, and works pretty well, whereas GRUB+WinXP is a poor match,
> > and the WinXP boot manager is a pretty reasonable tool.
> 
> That's nonsense.
> Millions of people are using to grub to boot Linux and/or Windows.
> It works perfectly well.
> 
> It's easier to install Windows first,
> but if you install Linux (with grub) first
> it is a good idea to save the MBR with something like
> 
>         dd if=/dev/hda of=mbr bs=512 count=1
> 
> Then you can replace it afterwords (if you want) with
> 
>         dd of=/dev/hda if=mbr bs=512 count=1
Well the Master Boot itself is only the first 446 bytes. After that are
the partition. By replacing the first 512 butes you are wiping out any
changes you made in the boot blocks. Maybe that is want you wanted to do
but it is not necessary.