Writing GParted GRUB Menu

To write the menu for the GRUB we have to invoke a text editor and write the menu.lst file. “Debian” command line has the “nano” editor, same as “pico” Hence, I can use either name. At the command prompt I enter “pico /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst” When  the editor opens I write down the following lines. I am careful not to leave spce after end of each line and not a line skipped between line. Only between each section I leave a line. each section starts with the phrase, “title”
default 0
title GParted live
root (hd0,0)
kernel /live/vmlinuz1 toram boot=live union=aufs noswap noprompt vga=normal ip=frommedia
initrd /live/initrd1.img
boot

title CDROM
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/grub/memdisk
initrdl /boot/grub/sbootmgr.dsk

kernel is the core of each operating system loaded to do house keeping jobs such as delegating jobs to the the hardware and doing their requests. initrd job is to intialize physical memory of computer that is to put the image of operating system in RAM. This image is called the system and its job is to boot or make the computer live. I remember that I had the required files “memdisk” and “sbootmgr.dsk” on my customized GParted ISO.  I use the copy command
“cp –pf /live/image/memdisk  /mnt/boot/grub/memdisk” and
“cp –pf /live/image/sbootmgr.dsk  /mnt/boot/grub/sbootmgr.dsk” to copy these two files into the grub boot file. They load GParted from the GParted CD instead of GParted hard disk partition if I opt to. Let me tell you I can add more sections to this grub menu to load any further operating system from GParted partition and add a nice splash to the menu with cool listing and get rid of XOSL! So why not? It is because I do experiment with tools to become more efficient.

Creating Partition on Virtual Box

After finishing on creating partition, it is a good idea to roam around “Debian” and become used to its environment. Just enter “ls”  to get a list of facilities that I got on the root. if I enter “ls /sbin” I’ll get a list of loads of utilities available for me. One is “mke2fs” that creates Ext2 file system for Linux partition. I can remember that I liked to install permanently a GParted on an extended logical partition at the beginning of my hard disk. I enter “mke2fs –L GParted /dev/hda6” at the command prompt. It does its job and creates a Linux partition on my hda6 logical device. I use option “–L GParted” to have a volume label for my partition, besides. I notice always to keep the required blank spaces. before and after that option in the command and after “L”. Now I run an “–pfv e2fsck /dev/hda6” to have some expert information about my logical device. Again those switches help me to keep things under control and unattended. I should plan everything ahead and leave them to be done without having  been around to watch them. At the end I can read the report or any log file to find out what has gone. So “unattended but verbose” is desired. Now it is time to “mount” the logical partition on a directory. I can create any directory that I like, but already there is a directory in “Debian” for that: it is “/mnt” directory on the root. I enter “mount /dev/hda6 /mnt”. At times it is necessary to use “mount –t ext2 /dev/hda6 /mnt” to explicitly guide the commands to the type of mounted partition. Now, everything is fresh and clean and I do not need to do that. I have the device mounted now I start to install my own image and directories. I follow advise of GParted site. I should decompress GParted.zip into the root of “/mnt”. I should find the place of “unzip” command and gparted .zip on the CD image that right now I have live on the RAM disk space. If I enter just “ls” I see a “live” folder in the list. I enter “cd live” that takes my inside the “live” directory. There I have two folders: “cow” and “image” I enter “cd image” Here is the list of all files and folders that I put when I was creating my custom GParted CD ROM. Among them now I need gparted.zip and “unzip”. They are here. Now I follow GParted website command but I should have all paths in commands. Alternatively I can copy these two files to the root of “Debian live RAM” I enter “/live/image/unzip /live/image/gparted.zip –d /mnt”. I note that I should repeat the complete path for each file and folder and unzip is completely case sensitive. Switch “ – d” shows the directory of installation. I did whatever GParted advised. From here, or at the root I check “ls /mnt” and find out every thing is as it should. I have “COPYING” file at the root. From now on it works on the hard disk but now I am in a logical partition and have other plans hence I need a “GRUB” for loading this device from “XOSL” I go into the root and enter “mkdir /mnt/boot” That creates the required “/boot” directory for installing “GRUB”. Then I enter “/sbin/grub-install ––no-floppy ––root-directory=/mnt /dev/hda6 ” Switch –no-floppy shows that I do not use a floppy for loading “—root-directory=/mnt is the place that “GRUB” finds its “/boot” directory as already created and ready and at the end we have installing device. Usually “GRUB” gives a warning about “device.map” that should be ignored. I can inspect “ls /mnt/boot/grub” for installed folders. It is better to sort out things by invoking GRUB command environment by entering “sudo grub” There at the “grub>” prompt, I enter  “find /bbot/grub/stage1” It replies “(hd0,5)” It is in the brackets and I know that it means the partition number 6 (5+1) on the device number 1 (=0+1). Grub counts from zero rather than one. Then at the “grub>” prompt I enter “root (hd0,5)” It replies “file system type is ext2fs, partition type ex83” both have the same meaning. Then I enter “setup (hd0,5)” It gives few lines of message and news of successful installation. Then I enter “quit” and back to “Debian” command prompt. So far so good. Now remains to edit the “menu.lst” of GRUbB and a nice splash for it.

Creating Partitions on Virtual Disks

After those calculations, I have better idea of what going on in hypothetical geometry of hard disks. Now I open my xVM virtualBox. I create a “New” machine. For operating system I select “Other.” For the Version, I select “other,” for version. I select a new virtual hard disk for it as much as 16Gb. I mount my custom made GParted.iso as CD on the “Other” machine and then I start the machine. It boots from GParted.iso.  I select the second row from the GParted menu, to be able to un-mount the CD if I opt to. Then I select the default key map of GParted. And finally I select the language from the language menu. After that a menu loads that ask me for three options: [0], [1], and [2]. I select [2] to take me to the GParted “Debian” command. Then I type “fdisk /dev/hda” at the prompt and then “enter.” It gives number of cylinders C=33288, and usual Linux warning on exceeding C=1024 and then subcommands for “fdisk” comes as “command (m for help).” If I type “m” and then “enter” a list of available commands and at the bottom “x” for expert commands. I type “x” and “enter.” A sub-subcommand comes for expert commands. In this if I type “m” and “enter” another list comes for available expert sub-subcommands. Now I type “c” to change number of cylinders and “enter.” A prompt offers me possible number of cylinders from 1 to 33288. I type 2088 as my previous calculations show. It accepts. Then I type “s” to confirm number of sectors. I can change it for adventure but not for work. I select the default S=63 without any change by typing 63 at the prompt and “enter.” Then I type “h” and “enter” to change heads. It offers me from one to 255 and default 16. I type 255 for H=255 and “enter.” At the next prompt I type “r” to go back to “fdisk” non-expert subcommand prompt. To do my partitions I type “n” and “enter.” It asks me with a help menu “type e for extended” and “type p for primary.” I enter “e” Then it asks me for partition number (1-4). Here I adventure to put the extended partition at the beginning of the disk contrary to usual practice that puts it at the end. I enter “1” Then it asks me for the size. It asks me for beginning cylinder by offering (1 to 2088). Here I get confirmation that my calculated scheme is under way. I enter “1”  and then for the end of extended partition I enter “40” I leave 2048 cylinder for two XP side by side. Then again I enter “n” This time it offers me “l for logical partition” since we cannot have any more extended partition but we can have only logical partitions inside the extended partition. I enter “p” and it asks me for partition number (2 to 4). I select “2” This time it offers 41 for beginning of partition as default that I accept by entering for the end of partition I type 1064 (=40+1024) I confine number of cylinder to its maximum of 1024. I repeat the procedure for the last partition from 1065 to 2088. Then again I enter “n” - what for this time? to create logical partitions inside extended partition. At the next menu, I enter “l” for logical partition. It offers me to select a number (5 and greater) since logical partitions at any situation begin from 5. I enter “5” Then It asks for the beginning that I enter default cylinder “1” and for the end I enter “3” This is my XOSL partition, 24Mb. I cannot have less than this. I repeat the procedure for second logical partition that keeps my customized GParted from cylinder 4 to cylinder 40 in partition “6”. Now I have four partitions ready. I type “a” at the “fdisk” subcommand to make GParted partition bootable. It asks me for the partition number (1 to 6). I enter “6”. To be sure of my operation I enter “p” It gives a list of my partition with their number of cylinders as “/dev/hda1” –the extended partition, “/dev/hda2” – the first primary, “/dev/hda3”, as the other primary,  “/dev/hda5” first logical and at last “/dev/hda6” the other logical partition. I can see a “*” is next to “/dev/hda6” showing that it is bootable. I enter “w” to save the partition table and come out of the “fdisk” subcommand.

Utilizing Virtual Box

I have the GParted.iso image saved somewhere in my computer and want to test it and become familiar with it. I have not burnt it yet to a CD ROM. I open my xVM VirtualBox and mount this ISO image on it by browsing to its saved folder. These all intuitively can be done. Then I start my virtual machine. I already had selected "Other" as name of machine to remember that type of my virtual machine is unspecified. When machine starts it automatically finds the mounted image and then GParted loads. I find it better to use graphical default GParted for a non-partitioned hard disk. In GParted GUI menu I create these partitions: first an extended 2GB second a primary 9Gb and third a primary 9Gb. I create three logical partition inside the first extended partition: first a 16Mb FAT16 for XOSL (it comes as 24Mb) then an ex2 logical with 250Mb capacity and remaining FAT32 for Freedos. I format next primary partition with NTFS for my first XP Windows. I leave the last partition for later. That I selected extended partition as first partition was to overpower myths regarding "first partition" usage. GParted promise is that that its partitions are rounded to "cylinder" but I cannot rely on that due to the fact that in its GUI I could not find any option for selecting number of heads. When you normalise the geometry of the partition and read CHS (Cylinder, Head, Sector), say by Ranish partition tools sometimes you get fractions. It is better to do a basic partitioning and then restart GParted in its "Debian" command lines and, using fdisk utility, fine tune partitions based on a CHS calculated as H=255, S=63 and C should be got through calculations, rather than default of GParted that uses only H=16. This default gives thousands of cylinder. For H=255 and S=63 each roughly 8Mb is one cylinder. Hence, for 24Mb I select 3 cylinders, for 250Mb I select 30 cylinders for Freedos I select 220 cylinders and so on.

Working with Virtual Box

My goal is not to run a virtual desktop in my PC. I do that but not for the jobs I counted in previous post. Virtualization has found its applications mostly in corporate computing from the time that Novell introduced its workstation software for Microsoft server software to be installed in place of Windows 2000 workstation. One good usage of virtual boxes is to test beta and candidate software. For example, now I am doing it with Microsoft's future operating system Windows 7 RC with 30Gb of virtual hard disk. I can have it free for more than a year with VIP services of volunteer users. It is not advisable to install a not very stable operating system on a hard disk that contains side by side the missus's emails and social networking and her daily software, except that you like to sleep on the couch with the pooch. (Well, they don't rhyme.) Ergo, you put it safely on the virtual box and if it doesn't behave you simply drop everything in the recycle bin and start anew. Anyway, I was talking about my GParted virtual experiments. I do them with virtual hard disk and when I become confident that I have done everything correctly and all necessary details have been put on the paper and the risk of doing them on a roaring and working hard disk with valuable assets are almost nil then I transfer my experience on the live and kicking hard disk. This is the way that modern engineers do their jobs. When You send a box round the Mars and it takes five years for such a project you cannot revise it at its destination. Everything should work as it is drafted on the paper. One should predict unpredictable. One way of achieving that is procuring redundancy, that is, having alternative devices and slack paths in the project. Perhaps people can remember story of Titanic ship sank in 1912. In the design of the vessel, modern finance management for optimization of costs had forced design engineers to show their confidence by reducing the number of lifeboats to the half of the necessary items that should be predicated for saving all crews and passengers in a belief of a never-sinking vessel design. To that reason, why any boat should be provided at all; for fishing day-out of some passengers? Actually, a modern engineer should provide more than enough of lifeboats in redundancy, in case some rich people might avoid being crammed with smelly people in the same lifeboat on a sinking accident. That lesson in terms of computer means, "Always keep a backup for your valuable data!" The other trick of engineers is called "simulation." It means repeating the desired job in a safe environment and finding what is not predicted correctly and what goes wrong. Then eliminating those obstacles and moving to the harsher level of simulation such that their design can safely pass the worst case scenarios. My virtual box helps me to simulate things in a safe environment without harming valuable assets of others.

Using Virtual PC Box

I fell a bit far from my GParted discussion. My goal is to create comfortable environments for writing assembly codes and debugging and writing drivers. Meanwhile, I craft to make hardware more friendly for me. I created a custom GParted.iso that included some additional software to install GParted permanently on hard disk. I need it for partitioning and also to use its good command line "Debian" Linux flavour. If I simply install a GParted on the hard disk, later in case, running it from GParted Live CD may cause complications, such as locking the live version. Hence, I should always keep the option of running both from the hard disk and from the Live CD in my GRUB menu. To do that I put sbootmgr.dsk and memdisk files into the root of my customized ISO. Some advised that I should have memdisk.bin. The correct, as Linux advises, is just memdisk without .bin extension. I can take it from syslinux or isolinux folder in GParted. I get sbootmgr.dsk from here. Now I have my GParted.iso built by ImgBurn ready to be tested on My Sun's VirtualBox. I install VirtualBox and I open it. From the tool bar I select "New" and I follow GUI for creating a new virtual PC. For the type of PC operating system I have different options. I can select a Microsoft Windows, a Sun Solaris, a Linux, a Dos or finally an unspecified shown as "Other." I select this very last one. In this way I do not bound me to later default choices of VirtualBox. I select a 374Mb for the RAM of my virtual PC. A dynamically expandable virtual hard disk with generous 20Gb space later allows me to put my ideas better in practice. The goal is to just install two XP operating systems next to each other and some little things such as a DOS system and of course GParted and XOSL.

Making Enhanced GParted ISO Image

To make GParted.iso bootable, ImgBurn helps us in finding the image of the floppy which can boot CDROM. Any bootable CD carries such an image. If one is very kin or perhaps uber-geek, he might build that manually himself. Later I delineate my own attempts on that. I already had selected "creating ISO image from a folder" from ImgBurn menu. On the right side of the user interface for this command there is a "tabbed" pane. I open the "Advanced" tab from this. There I can see another "tabbed" system and a "tab" for "Bootable Disc." When I check the box at the top for "Make Image Bootable" then it makes the input fields "enabled." I see that I can brows to target "boot image file" wherever it is. I had created an empty folder, as I already said, and had filled it with extract of original downloaded GParted.iso. I brows into this folder and then open isolinux folder. Inside that ImgBurn picks the isolinux.bin as the boot image for my enhanced Gparted ISO CD image. I leave every other things to ImgBurn defaults and confirm all other dialogues. ImgBurn creates desired image in a minute or two. I do not need to burn this image to test it. I use a virtual machine to that end.

Building ISO Image

By the way I also need two additional files to be available in my custom made GParted.iso. One is memdisk and the other is sbootmgr.dsk. I need these later when I am configuring GRUB tools to access my Linux partition where I have installed GParted. One might be eager to utilize LILO for that. It is another challenge. GRUB install utility, grub-install comes with the GParted "Debian" terminal, but LILO should be worked out by you. XOSL can load both of them if they become configured properly. Now, I should build the ISO back. For that I use completely free ISO creator and burning tools ImgBurn from here . I believe when I use these excellent free tools it is not a bad idea to donate some money to their cause. It keeps the flame alight and is quite encouraging. I do that if I could. The tool "ImgBurn" has different options. We have a folder of GParted and we need an ISO image of it. We select this option from the "ImgBurn" easy select user interface. I should be careful to make the ISO "bootable."

Injecting Files into ISO Image

ISO images are read only files and one can't inject files into them. Hence to add some bits and pieces to my GParted.iso I need to extract the ISO into an ordinary folder and then inject, or rather add, extra files and folders to it. To be able to do that extraction Ther are two methods.
First, download a virtual drive software. This software instals a virtual CD/DVD driver on your computer similar to your real CD/DVD/Blu-ray driver. Only that instead of real CD/DVD/Blu-ray you put a an ISO image on it. Then you can open that image and copy the content of that image into your computer. Then add (inject) your additional files into the content. And at last create a second new ISO that includes the injected files. There are many virtual drivers out there, but the one that I have used is the free Daemon Tool Light When you are installing it be careful not to accept its optional features such as the toolbar if you do not agree with them. Only instal the virtual drive. Also download it from its official website; otherwise, you might end up downloading annoying bloated softwares and ad-wares. Also there are many other products are advertised in the page that you should carefully find Daemon download among them.
In second method, I downloaded WinImage tools from here. This tool is not free but you can use it for thirty days free and meanwhile sort out your projects. I created a new folder in "My Documents" named it with GParted ISO file, showing versions and everything similar to my GParted version. Only I deleted .iso from its name. The folder is empty. Then I opened WinImage tool. From the "File" menu item "Open" command, I opened the GParted.iso. All files and folders inside the image appears in explorer frame and navigation pane of WinImage. I notice that the CD image includes isolinux but GParted.zip for hard disk included syslinux as it is obvious from their application. Isolinux puts an ISO image of a CD on the memory, syslinux puts the image from a hard disk on the physical memory. Then I go to "Image" menu item "Extract" command and brows to GParted empty folder I have created in "My Documents" to extract all files and folders of ISO CD in this folder. Now contents of ISO are accessible for adding new items. I added "unzip" file to the root of folder to use it later on my "Debian" command line for unzipping GParted.zip. I also added file GParted.zip to the root. Now I can reconstruct the folder back to a new ISO image of mine, using free "ImgBurn: Image Burn" utility as I explain in the next post.

Update, 25 February 2014 : You might find these two wikis useful, too.

• How to Convert a CD or DVD to ISO Image Files
• How to Create an ISO File

They include images and are step-by-step. Moreover, they are more recent than this post.

Note that in Windows 8/8.1 you do not need a virtual drive. Just right click on an ISO image, select "Open with" from the context menu and then from  the secondary menu, choose "Windows Explorer" to open the file. Windows promptly creates a Virtual DVD drives and opens ISO inside that drive. Please, "eject" that drive after finishing working with the ISO to release your resources. Nevertheless, you need to copy files from that location to other locations to be able to manipulate them. ISO images are "read-only" files.

GParted Has Commandline Linux

I always had two floppies of Basic Linux 3 to work on command line Linux. Now by permanent installing of GParted I have a more powerful tools. In due time I write what should be added to these tools to make them more ideal. For that reason I selected a more relax space for GParted. I also couldn't use the tools available in this minimalist Debian to unzip GParted.zip downloaded for installing on hard disk. Gunzip and Zcat give "more than one entry point" error. They cannot decompress Gzipped by "7Z" either. Curtis Gedak from GParted kindly instructed me, by private communication, that to use good old free "Zip" and "Unzip" from here. I selected "unz550x-glibc.zip" from the list. From the unzipped folder I only need to have the file "unzip," some hundred kilo bytes. Other pieces could be useful but not right now.Later I should inject this to GParted CD iso image that I have together with other things.

Installing GParted on a Hard Disk Partition

A good drill is to put GParted in some Linux partition flavours. If you can force different operating systems and different partitioning schemes coexist or even symbiosis together and you can do it when you are young then later you can force your dog to sleep on the floor instead of on your bed. Hence, my goal becomes to put XOSL and GParted inside an extended partition and have other operating systems in primary partitions. I am interested in using XOSL as the start menu. One bad thing about XOSL is that you are limited to its GUI. There s no way to edit some script to hack things over it. It is another project to search inside its source documents and find things. It has its own dedicated partitioning system with partition type=78 hex. I still have not tested a second version, XOSL2 (Return of XOSL?). But it has many good things such as destroying booting trace of installed operating systems and taking all activities in its own hands. That eliminate need of editing boot loaders of other operating systems. They do not become aware of each other activation and believe that each one of them is the default active operating system. That encouraged me to work with XOSL until I become convinced that it is becoming obsolete and I need to replace it with some new device such as GRUB or GRUB2 and I am still puzzled with GRUB super CD. You notice that I mean GNU and free software. Otherwise, if one pays he can get consultants come and sort things for his computer. Let me tell you what happened next. I reformatted my extended partition (already I called it "Lab" partition) as again 24Mb of FAT16 logical partition for XOSL and a 300Mb logical for GParted with "ex2" partition type. I left this space bigger than required 120Mb because I want to do some other experiment later. I used GParted latest CD to do that. Gparted includes a command line Linux "Debian" flavour, which is crammed with desired tools for experimenting Unix type of operating systems.

Installing GParted and XOSL on FAT partitions

Alternative way, I liked is to use GParted for all partitioning jobs. I put Gparted Live CD and restarted computer. I select safe mode from the menu. It is more comfortable for sight to have vga normal rather than default vga=791 or whatever it is. In the menu of Gparted I delet any partition I had done from XP, but the XP's NTFS partition. I keep my XP untouched and then choose an extended partition, something more than 4GB from the beginning of the unallocated space. I selected "Lab" as its name since it is the place that I can experiment. For the logical partitions inside the extended partition I started from a default minimum of 16Mb for XOSL that comes out later as an actual 24Mb. I format it as FAT16 partition. It is more than enough for XOSL. Second logical drive I partition in the menu is a 120Mb for permanent residence of GParted with FAT32 format. I leave a 4Gb for FreeDos. If I can find my installed partitions on a DOS prompt by "fdisk" I will find partition letters "C:," "D:" and "E:" for these three new partitions, respectively. Now I should install XOSL and GParted. For XOSL installation I need to have any DOS bootable floppy that gives me a DOS prompt A:\> that is all. I put the entire XOSL folder inside this floppy. When I restarted after Gparted partitioning job I put this diskette immediately in the floppy drive to reboot from the diskette. When A:\> prompt comes I "cd," that is I change directory to XOSL and then I type "INSTALL." After that I follow and accept all defaults. I am careful to have "C" as installation partition. I can change it by toggling "Page Up" on my keyboard, but I don't. When it reboots I configure it to be able to boot from GParted partition or from FreeDos or from XP or from a floppy drive and, of course, any future operating system that I might decide. I check the box for XP to be my default boot and select a hot key such as "x" key for accelerated booting. I'll have XOSL on my hard drive installed forever and whatever happens in future, even if I want to fresh install other things, it remains there. I check "My Computer" to see what letters XP has chosen for new partitions. I notice it has selected "E" for "XOSL" and "H" for GParted and "I" for FreeDos partition. It has left "F" and "G" for my other hard disk drives. I go to disk manager and change "XOSL" to "P" and Gparted to "Q" to keep them away from other drives and daily unwanted manipulations. Now I should install GParted and make it permanent, as well. I go to my XP. From here I downloaded a zipped version of GParted for hard disk drives. Inside that, when unzipped to a folder in any place in XP, there are three folders: "live," "syslinux" and "utils." Inside utils from the folder "Win32" I copy "syslinux.exe" and paste it in "C:\Documents and Settings\Owner" to be accessible from XP command prompt. Then I go to "start" in the XP and "Run" from the right hand pane. When the "Run" dialogue comes usually is on its default "cmd" or in the last command that has been run. In the later case I change it back to "cmd" command and then I "OK" button. In the command prompt window I type "syslinux.exe -sfa Q:" where "Q" is the designated partition for GParted. In this way I install "ldlinux.sys" on Gparted partition to make it linux bootable. Then from the unzipped folder of GParted I copy three folders "live," "syslinux," and "utils" and drop them in the "Q" drive such that they sit on the root of the drive. Now, if I restart and I go to menu of XOSL, I can choose to boot it in GParted partition and voila Gparted boots to its menu and I have it permanently for any future manipulations of hard disks.

Using GParted for Partitions of Different File Systems

I have a 250Gb hard disk for my operating system(s). I like to put two identical XP's on it. One for me and one for my wife. I do not like to use two different screen names. Let me do with my software developments and she does with emails and photos and social networking and uTubes without friction. But still I have not done that. It is easy to put two instances of XP on two different hard disks on the same machine and then command them with XOSL, but on the same hard disk you should eliminate some hurdles. I also have a free Solaris. So I need a place to exchange files between Solaris and XP. I need a small partition for my FreeDos as much as 4Gb and a tinny independent place as 50Mb for XOSL. I can put it inside the Freedos partition but I'd rather not since I might need frequently erase FreeDos and re-install it for improved usage. XP partition, I keep it within its 128Gb limit of old version BIOS's. This will be partitioned in NTFS. I use GParted to do this partition. I disconnect my other hard disk drives from inside the computer case, both data cable and power cable. Before opening the case I should turn the main socket off but I leave the plug connected, to keep the earth connection as it is. I disconnect the other drives to prevent the complications that occurs when installing operating systems on the main drive when installation reads all the hardware pieces and you might become confused and inadvertently one might format other disks and install operating system there. Then I switch the socket back. I put my latest version burned CD of GParted iso in the optical drive - hopefully now all have a DVD-combo drive at least or better - and restart the computer. When it turns on it goes on GParted Live Cd. It is not necessary to change the BIOS boot sequence. I accept all defaults of the GParted. In GParted menu I can see my main hard disk. I select all partitions on it and remove all of them to have one new unallocated whole disk. Then I select from the menu "partition" then "new" and a dialogue comes out to ask about the size and file system format. I select 120Gb and "linux swap" for the file format and choose SOLARIS for name. For the remaining part I select NTFS file system format and choose XP as name for it. Its size is almost 128Gb. I do this since at the time of installation of XP when it is searching for partition to install, XP completely ignores "linux swap" as unknown partition and without any complication formats its partition and installs on its own NTFS even if it is from an oem cd set. Later I can come back with my GParted Live and partition the first part. I need to put the other things at the begining partition. I can do the other way but when I am more comfortable with these kinds of operations. When XP is installed you can use the disk manager for creating partitions for FreeDos and XOSL.