duel boot xp & linux help

what the hell are you doing, and what the hell is backtrack?

delete all the partitions
make 1 partition for xp, you can use NTFS & most new linux distro's can use it now.
install xp

then install Linux and when it asks you tell it to use the remaining space.

it will install a bootmenu for you.

o,k, i looked up backtrack.
it's a Live cd, are you sure it's installable?

There is a walkthrough document on hard disk installation on the Back Track website, if you look under free projects, Backtrack, Documentation you will want the second pdf file.
Not sure if I should be posting a link here but if you pm me I'll let you have it.
Hope this helps.

have you considered using vmware on your machine at all?

this would prevent any boot issues like this and leave your current installation of windows intact. VMware server is free from the vmware website.

It is totally possible to install BackTrack and to have it as dual boot with XP or with Vista as I have it on a laptop.

XP will have wrote the MBR during installation, overwriting LILO.

installing onto VMWare might not give the right level of hardware access as BackTrack will need, the network hardware in particular.

This is a Vista dual boot walk-through but the relevant bits should be similar:

http://www.securitydistro.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=251&Itemid=43

thanks guys ill give it another shot right now

ok im stuck all the guides have dev/sda and do there poartations in there i only have dev/hda and have done by partation in there but the drive is always busy so i thought they might be mounted so ive tried unmounting them but when i type the command in a shell like "unmount dev/hda1" i get an error like "-bash:unmount: command not found"

also i have created a linuxswap drive at dev/hda2 and when i try "swapon dev/hda2" it says "swapon: cannot start dev/hda2: no such file or directory"

Have a read

Here

It's a dual boot guide for Windows / Linux (Ubuntu) when you already have Windows installed....

The unmount command is 'umount' (without the n). Confusing I know . As for the swapon, you need to supply a full path (unless you're in the root directory). So you should type 'swappon /dev/hda2'.

Well done for giving linux a try, but to be honest, I think you'd be better off installing a full distribution like Ubuntu, Fedora or Suse instead of Backtrack as a first attempt. They have nicer installers, and support more of the latest hardware. I'm assuming you've backed up all of your important data, 'cause you can easily mess things up if you start deleting and creating partitions.

Good luck.

I would go with spectres route and use VMWare

You can switch between your std OS and your new one

install arconis disk directpr suite and use os selector to sort out multiple os's

karym6 said:

have you considered using vmware on your machine at all?

this would prevent any boot issues like this and leave your current installation of windows intact. VMware server is free from the vmware website.

Click to expand...

vmware would give you complete access to all needed hardware - it will also install a set of drivers to your new virtual machine to make things even smoother.

There is also Microsoft Virtual PC, this is also free but I am not sure it supports any other OS than windows. I have used it to install Windows 98 SE before, and to be honest - its not as good as vmware.

Argh!

No-one is reading posts and someone is quoting themselves .

I never use VMWare, I'd sooner set up a dual-boot or another machine.

Possibly, for the packet-injection needed for certain uses of BackTrack2, the Linux kernel included with BT2 (including some patched drivers, I think) will need better access than provided than if it's running in a virtual machine.

I have tried Acronis Disk Director with Vista and BT2, I personally found it better to use LILO as a boot manager.

BT2 is particular when it comes to wireless card drivers, bearing the cross of Intel's 4965 card, I have played with BT2 and tried kernel updates and rebuilds with various tweaks. All to no avail so far .

I would be interested to find out if anyone has tried to use all of the features of BT2 from within a VM.

You're right spectre. VMWare only gives you limited access to the hardware. Infact, most of the 'hardware' you see in a VM is a software abstraction. For instance, the hard drives are usually just a file on the host, and network devices are a software layer over the top of the host's ethernet devices.

There is (in my experience) VERY limited support for things like packet injection or promiscuous interfaces. This means that the 'interesting' stuff in backtrack won't work. The only time you do get direct access to hardware is with usb devices, which get passed through to the VM fairly cleanly. So you can (and I have) use something like a WUSB54G wireless interface for packet injection, arp spoofing etc.

That said, using a virtual machine is a good way to get used to Linux, without the supposed problems associated with driver support etc. But as I and others already said in previous posts, backtrack isn't the best general linux distribution. It's too specialised to be useful day to day, and I wouldn't recommend installing it any way. Pick another distro.

ok thanks for ur help but im going to stick with backtrack but am getting nowhere
when ever i do a reboot it always freezes on "L 99 99 99 99 99 99......" im going to give it another going 2morrow, well later on today

Spectre said:

Argh!I would be interested to find out if anyone has tried to use all of the features of BT2 from within a VM.

Click to expand...

I am giving this a go now, we use vmware (albeit esx) at work for pretty much everything from webservers to application servers and desktops.

I am fairly certain this will work, once it does I will look for a place to upload the vmware image.

Ok, I downloaded backtrack and used it sucessfully in vmware. I was planning on uploading the image I used to some place on the internet for you all to take a look - but...

Turns out you dont need to, the friendly peeps over at vmware already have one ready made for you. This means you only need to download vmware player (which is also free) along with the backtrack2.0 appliance (http://www.vmware.com/appliances/directory/592) and your away.

I chatted with some of the chaps in our it team about this at work today - turns out they use this for penetration testing on some of our systems (they put me onto the applicance).

Also, spectre - I meant to quote your post on vmware, not mine!

karym6 said:

Also, spectre - I meant to quote your post on vmware, not mine!

Click to expand...

I thought you had .