On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 10:52 AM, Michael Higgins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > (Saw a similar thread, going the wrong way.) > > I have a laptop with a spare partition waiting for WinXP, to install > from Dell OEM disks that came originally. > > Is this possible? I understand XP will overwrite the MBR. So, I'd have > to re-install grub & that's it? '-) > > Cheers, > > -- > |\ /| | | ~ ~ > | \/ | |---| `|` ? > | |ichael | |iggins \^ / > michael.higgins[at]evolone[dot]org
I would be very careful about installing from OEM disks. My HP OEM disks will actually blow ALL the partitions on the drive away, repartition and reformat the whole drive back to the way it was shipped from the factory. Better if you can find a regular retail copy of XP. Note that in the case of this HP Vista license it only works with the OEM install. The license is no good with a normal copy of Vista. The other issue I'm having right now is that XP is installed and the machine boots just fine but a 2001 XP disk doesn't have drivers to enable networking support so the machine cannot get to the net for updates. I think now I'll start on the Gentoo install, get a drive set up that the XP partition can see (small FAT or NTFS drive) and then use Gentoo to get the drivers onto the system so that XP can start working. You might not have that problem with your OEM disk as they certainly have the right drivers for your hardware. Hope this helps, Mark -- gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org mailing list
