won't dual boot: 2 disks and LVM

[Rick Stevens]

On Tue, 2007-12-18 at 15:10 +0000, michael wrote:
> I'm looking for a solution for (re-)installing WinXP on my slave disk
> when I have Fedora and LVM on the master disk. In the past I've opened
> up the box and unplugged the Fedora/LVM disk in order for WinXP to
> install okay. But this seems much too drastic. Even swapping disk order
> (in BIOS) doesn't help - WinXP installation sits there "forever" when
> checking current config.

Windows assumes it owns the entire computer.  This is a deliberate
design of Windows, which is why it'll overwrite the MBR as well with
absolutely no regard of what's already there.

> Whilst I cannot find any definite reference stating "MS WinXP cannot
> handle LVM" it does seem to be the culprit. 

You're correct in that Windows can't handle LVM.  Its installer must
have either adequate "unused" space on the primary hard drive or a
Windows partition it can overwrite.  Without that it won't install.

As is probably obvious, I'm not a fan of Windows or Microsoft.  Never
have been.
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- Rick Stevens, Principal Engineer             rstevens at internap.com -
- CDN Systems, Internap, Inc.                http://www.internap.com -
-                                                                    -
-        Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.        -
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