How to Dual boot Windows 7 and RedHat 5

[blackrose]

Ok thanks for reading this. I have been using Windows 7 for awhile and I have not that much knowledge about Linux.

I recently downloaded RHEL and I want to install my redhat in my Laptop which is running W7. My concern is that I don't want to jeopardise my laptop and send time reparing it.
I need a very comprehensive guide so that I don't mess my laptop.

I also need a guide in installing RHEL 5 Via USB as I don't want to burn the ISO in a DVD.

[hellnoire]

I can't give you a comprehensive guide, but I have a feeling you'll have to manually configure GRUB if it doesn't have GRUB2. I'm not sure if it does or not, I used it once and only once, so I have no general option because I didn't even boot it up before installing over it. If you need help with that, I can certainly help you.

[blackrose]

OK will try and get back to you.

[work_life]

I assume when you installed windows, you must have left some free space on your hard drive for the RHEL 5 installation.

burn the image to the usb drive, boot from it, install graphically, install grub as bootloader and TO THE MBR

Now, fdisk -l to list the paritions check and look up the parition for example /dev/sda2 where windows is installed as ntfs.
open up a terminal and edit with vi /boot/grub/menu.1st and add the following corresponding to your windows parition.
(0) YOUR RHEL entry
(1) Windows
title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd0,1) (you might ask why (0,1) well for sda1 it would be (0,0) and sda2 (0,1) and so on...)
makeactive
chainloader +1

reboot and you should be able to boot both into rhel and windows

[hellnoire]

vi? I think for his sake, he might want to use something more... graphical. A bit more user friendly, if you ask me.

[tarung1793]

i dont know of a direct gui way, but what i am thinking is of creating 2 separate paritions: 1 boot partition and one on which you are going to install red hat. manually install grub on the boot partiton and red hat on the second one, then u may access the boot partition via the ubuntu live cd, running the update grub command from there.

but still work_life way is less time consuming, and more educational...lollzz...

[blackrose]

The main thing is that I love to use Redhat more than Windows, but due to my study I have to all shorts of things using Windows (of course software) that are popular. I will dual boot with Ubuntu instead RH. RH would help me to get the certification.