installed debian for first time

ilkjester · Post by **ilkjester** » 11 Oct 2008, 10:21

So i picked up a free 15 gig hard drive and have been wanting to install linux for a long time. Now that i finally have internet i downloaded it and installed it on he hard drive after unhooking my hard drive with xp on it just to make sure i didnt accidentally erase anything on it. Now what im wanting to know is how do i get debian to appear on the boot list. i followed a tutorial i found using bootpart but i had already set the master boot record to yes when i installed linux on the separate hard drive. So any help would be appreciated.

Post by **bad_brain** » 11 Oct 2008, 10:42

hehe, you should have left the XP HDD connected and simply have picked the free HDD as place to install Debian....the rest would have went automatically and the GRUB bootloader would have recognized XP and Debian.
NOW it gets a little more complicated because you have the XP bootloader on the one HDD and the GRUB boatloader on the other....and the GRUB loader MUST be on the 1st HDD...which is the XP one.
you would have to overwrite the XP bootloader manually now with the GRUB one,and even then the other boot sector on the Debian HDD will most likely cause problems.

so I recommend to wipe the Debian HDD and do a new install, this time with both HDDs connected. during install pick the HDD you want to use for Debian, pick "all in one partition"...and the rest should go automatically. the XP installation will be recognized by Debian and GRUB, so the danger of killing XP by accident is about zero.
imo this is the best option, because the manual GRUB install would be way more dangerous if you are not that experienced with Linux yet.
but of course backup all really important files from XP first...not because there is a real danger that you will kill the system, but better 10 backups you never needed than 1 you should have made....

ilkjester · Post by **ilkjester** » 11 Oct 2008, 11:02

Dang oh wells I had originally left them both plug in and after the two hard drives showed up on the next screen after i picked the one i wanted both of them showed up and it just automatically threw up a red flag and i shut it off and just pulled it out. Then once i installed it again im pretty sure it was just showing me the free space for both hard drives and i still "picked the final one yet". Anyways thanks man

ilkjester · Post by **ilkjester** » 11 Oct 2008, 16:49

So i reinstalled it early it worked fine. I almost shit myself well not really but scared the crap out of me. When i restarted debian came up and so did microsoft xp/2000 blah blah whatever else it had and then microsoft windows whistler i selected xp and long story short got the blue screen of death with some error freaked out. I then was wondering what windows whistler was and selected that and it was my xp. Anyways thanks for the help. It worked. Now once i get off work i just gotta get my belkin wireless g adapter to work. Thats how i get internet now lol.

Post by **computathug** » 11 Oct 2008, 18:54

Well i am pleased all worked out for you and here is a slight tip as seen as you have a few posts, but there fore you should really know better already.

Please don't double post when there is obviously no reason too.

Other than that good job

ilkjester · Post by **ilkjester** » 12 Oct 2008, 00:42

My bad I really didn't even know I had done it. This wireless adapter sucks and it always drops the connection. So it must have sent it when it told me it couldn't find the server at the same time. Sorrys.