I need to install Solaris 10 on an Windows XP Pro system running HPFS. I cannot find instructions (on the Sun website) about whether the Solaris 10 installer will recognize that XP is already installed, and whether it sets up dual boot automaticaly.
Can anyone tell me how to approach this, and how to avoid trashing my Windows OS and data?
Yes, the install recognizes the Windows XP OS. But, if XP is the only OS on your machine, it very likely uses your whole hard drive. What you need to do first is to defrag your XP OS three times before you proceed to create free space by resizing the partition in which contains XP and create from the freespace a partition to contain Solaris 10..
Creation of additional partitions on your hard drive must be done prior to install of Solaris 10. Your hard drive will only allow for the creation of 4 primary partitions. The first one must be the XP partition if you want a multiple boot machine. The new partition that you create for the Solaris OS must be formated for Solaris. You can use a "live" Linux CD for the creation of the partitions using cfdisk or some such package.
Then read the Solaris 10 installation information provided on the Sun site. Also a very good installation guide is found on the Blastwave.com site.
Good luck.
