[ros-general] Installing ReactOS with other OSes

[Rakhesh Sasidharan]

Hi all,

In continuation to my previous post, decided to go ahead and experiment. 

I already have a primary partition on my first disk. That hosts Win 98
and is called C:. I have another primary partition on my second disk.
That hosts FreeDOS and is called D:. And finally, I made a new primary
partition (since ReactOS can't handle more than one primary partition on
a disk) on my third disk ... called F:. Apart from these, I also have
Win XP, whose bootsector code is installed on C:. 

My understanding from the installation instructions is that if ReactOS
does not find any known OSes on the active partition, it will install
its own bootloader etc. So I made F: (the ReactOS partition) active, and
then went ahead with the installation process. That was a breeze
(particularly glad that the process showed me a list of all the
partitions in my system, as that made it easier for me to figure that
the ReactOS partition is called F: (and not G: as Win XP had christened
it)) ... and finally it went ahead and installed the bootloader code.
But unlike what I expected, it didn't install the code on F:, rather it
installed itself as a part of the XP bootmanager entries (i.e. it made
the file bootsect.ros and added an entry to boot.ini) on C:. 

Is this the intended way for things to work? I would have assumed since
F: is active, ReactOS will install its bootloader code there. Or am I
missing something in the whole picture? 

One more question, suppose I dont want to boot into ReactOS via the XP
bootloader code  -- say I decide to remove XP one fine day -- how can I
setup things so that ReactOS's code is written onto its partition
itself? I use GRUB for loading my OSes, so if there's some way I can
write the ReactOS loader to its respective partition, I can use GRUB to
chainload from there. Can I simply write the bootsect.ros file onto F:
using a command like 'dd' or something? I tried going to the recovery
console in the hope that it might have some of the NT commands like
"fixboot" etc, but I find that the console has not yet been implemented.
Any suggestions/ alternate commands please? 

Thanks,
Rakhesh

----- Original message -----
From: "Wesley Parish" <wes.parish at paradise.net.nz>
To: "ReactOS General List" <ros-general at reactos.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Aug 2004 15:20:07 +1200 (NZST)
Subject: Re: [ros-general] Installing ReactOS with other OSes

I've just bought a second-hand PC to test ReactOS on - together with
Win98 - and
intend hooking it up to the local Win98 network.  Does anyone have any
comments
on the maturity of the Samba NG code?  Any advice?  And how does it
connect with
ReactOS Explorer?  Via a Network Neighbourhood clone?

I suppose I can generate bug reports at the very least.

Wesley Parish

Quoting Rakhesh Sasidharan <lists at rakhesh.com>:

> Hi all!
> 
> Am thinking of trying out ReactOS on my home machine, but thought I'd
> clarify a few things before going ahead. 
> 
> My current setup is this: I have a primary master disk, on which I have
> Windows 98 (primary partition), FreeBSD (primary partition), Windows XP
> and Linux (logical partitions). I use GRUB as my bootloader. I have a
> secondary master disk, on which I plan to install FreeDOS (primary
> partition), and ReactOS (primary partition). I checked up with the
> FreeDOS folks and it seems installing FreeDOS into my existing setup is
> a no problem -- FreeDOS would need its equivalent of config.sys and
> autoexec.bat to be present on my C: (which is the Windows 98
> partition),
> and other than that there should be no hassles (FreeDOS will install
> its
> bootsector on its partition only, and I can get GRUB to load it from
> there).
> 
> >From the installation pages of ReactOS, I figure that if I were to
> install ReactOS into my current setup, it would add itself to the
> Windows XP boot manager. Coz my Windows 98 partition is currently
> active, and that's where the XP boot manager is installed, and that's
> where the ntldr and boot.ini files are located. Righto? 
> 
> But suppose I don't want to boot ReactOS through the XP boot manager,
> can I do the following: make the ReactOS partition as active
> beforehand,
> and so when ReactOS installs itself it will find that the active
> partition has no boot manager or files etc and so will install the
> bootsectors to this partition ... and then I can use GRUB to load these
> bootsectors to boot into ReactOS? Is this possible? ReactOS wont
> overwrite my MBR (GRUB) or XP boot manager etc in this case right? 
> 
> Thanks,
> Rakhesh
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