CentOS - May 2009 - Dual-booting CentOS and WinXP

Hi all,

You know how I asked about procedures to build a dual-boot system with
CentOS and WinXP a while ago? Well, I I've begun with a test machine.

What I had from start was a working CentOS 5.3 32b system. What I did was to
just add another empty drive configured as slave and then boot from the
Windows install cd.

The most curious thing happened now, I get a blank screen after the Windows
installer screen saying something about "Setting up install
procedure..."
just at the beginning. That is to say, this happens only if the hd with
CentOS is connected to power. If I disconnect the power connector to the
CentOS drive, the Windows installer happily goes on.

Is this to be expected, that Windows won't install if it sees a hd with
another OS as master?

Thanks for any hints.
-- 
BW,
	Sorin
-----------------------------------------------------------
# Sorin Srbu			[Sysadmin, Systems Engineer]
# Dept of Medicinal Chemistry,	Phone: +46 (0)18-4714482 >3 signals> GSM
# Div of Org Pharm Chem,	Mobile: +46 (0)701-718023
# Box 574, Uppsala University,	Fax: +46 (0)18-4714482
# SE-751 23 Uppsala, Sweden	Visit: BMC, Husargatan 3, D5:512b
#			Web: http://www.orgfarm.uu.se
-----------------------------------------------------------
# ()  ASCII ribbon campaign - Against html E-mail 
# /\
#
# MotD follows:
# This label is not a significant source of information.

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 5106 bytes
Desc: not available
URL:
<http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20090514/b46de88b/attachment-0004.bin>

Sorin Srbu wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> You know how I asked about procedures to build a dual-boot system with
> CentOS and WinXP a while ago? Well, I I've begun with a test machine.
> 
> What I had from start was a working CentOS 5.3 32b system. What I did was
to
> just add another empty drive configured as slave and then boot from the
> Windows install cd.
> 
> The most curious thing happened now, I get a blank screen after the Windows
> installer screen saying something about "Setting up install
procedure..."
> just at the beginning. That is to say, this happens only if the hd with
> CentOS is connected to power. If I disconnect the power connector to the
> CentOS drive, the Windows installer happily goes on.
> 
> Is this to be expected, that Windows won't install if it sees a hd with
> another OS as master?
> 
> Thanks for any hints.
> 
It's a known issue - I've seen it affecting other distro's (Fedora
in my
case). It's a Windows XP thing, not specific to the distro, and only 
affects WinXP afaik (doesn't affect Win2K, couldn't care less about 
Vista). I first came across it trying to install WinXP on a system that 
had previously had Fedora on it and the installer hangs at a black 
screen. The "solution" is to do as you've done and disconnect the
drive.
If it's a single drive system, then install Windows first for dual 
booting, or if you just want to reinstall Windows over the top of a 
previous Linux installation then remove all Linux partitions with fdisk 
first.