Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with dualboot

Dual Booting For Dummies

mannequito — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:14:17 -0800

Two-part question regarding a potential XP/Ubuntu dual-boot setup: a)Do I still worry about viruses if I'm not accessing the internet from the XP half? b) From reading online it seems that I'll be able to access files from the XP half while in Ubuntu, but will the opposite be true? I've actually never owned a Windows machine so apologies if I seem over paranoid about viruses. I'm just finally considering this in order to be able to record music and use my computer for djing.

And, in case the second question is confusing, what I mean is that as I understand it, anything I put on the computer in Windows will be accessible on the other operating system. But since I would be using Ubuntu for any downloading I'd like to know if that will be readily accessible in XP or if it would require copying it to an external harddrive, booting into Windows, and recopying it?

thanks everyone.

My Dream Dual Boot Netbook

lemonfridge — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:39:01 -0800

Help me build my perfect netbook! I've had my iBook G4 since I started Uni over 6 years ago, but it's starting to show it's age and things are starting to play up (apart from the battery!)

So I've ordered myself a Samsung NC20 with a 2Gb of RAM upgrade. I'd really like to dual or triple boot between Windows, OSX, and....something.

1. It comes with XP, but I'm tempted to go for a Windows 7 upgrade. Thoughts?

I like OSX and wouldn't mind keeping it an option.

2. I'd like a flavour of Linux or possible the new Google OS. Thoughts?

3. I really like how quickly my current iBook waked up when I open the lid. Can I expect the same thing from my new NC20?

4. Where is the best guide to acheive what I want? I've never dual booted anything before.

Conflicting information and experiences regarding dual-booting Windows XP and 7

feelinggood — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 14:25:50 -0800

How can I install Windows 7 on a machine that already has XP installed? There seems to be some conflciting information and experiences out there on the web. Assume I know all about partitioning, re-sizing, etc., etc.
A previous question on this exact topic back in January got referred to these Lifehacker instructions. BUT, if you read the Lifehacker comments on these instruction, there seem to be a fair number of problems.
One common suggestion is to use the boot manager EasyBCD (I'm assuming Vista/Windows 7 makes no matter). Would I use this program only to fix a problem, or before I installed Windows 7? Or is Windows 7 a system requirement for EasyBCD?
I've looked at this page from Seven Forums and this one from NeoSmart (the makers of EasyBCD).
By far, the vast majority of answers still seem to point to the Lifehacker instructions, and the Lifehacker people don't seem to have retracted them. Are the small number of problems posted just inevitable?

Subsidiary or alternative question: Could I just install Windows 7 on a USB external drive (assume my BIOS supports booting from that drive). What would happen when I turned the computer on? Just choose which drive I wanted to boot from and proceed?

Boot Screen is all out of goose.

Cantdosleepy — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 10:28:17 -0800

Trying to install XP and Ubuntu as dual-boot on a Dell Dimension 3100. The first menu, where I select which operating system to load, is off-centre and starts halfway down the screen. Some of the bottom of the menu appears at the top of the screen. Which means some of the options can't be seen. Help! Example screenshot of the display error (this one during Windows setup)

At the bottom of the operating-system-choice menu screen you can see three different Ubuntu start-up options, but the menu disappears off the bottom before 'XP Home Edition' appears. Through trial and error I've worked out that you have to press the down cursor twice more after the highlighting disappears off the bottom of the screen if you want to select XP. I'm setting this computer up for a not-terribly computer-literate family, though, so that's not really an option.

Any ideas of how to realign this screen?

6.5 hour repartition. What?

TomMelee — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 14:30:24 -0800

What the heck is going on with this laptop as I reformat and set it up to dual boot? Man I hate to waste a question like this.

My girlfriend just bought a new Toshiba laptop. It's got a 360gb HDD and windows vista. We checked drivers and decided to get rid of vista and put XP and 7 on it instead.

I tried to follow lifehacker's guide, but it would NOT allow me to repartition the existing drive. (actually there were three. a 1.5Gb, a 7Gb, and the rest all on one. I know the 7 is the system restore, but we don't need it, so I removed it and added it to the main.)

Anyway, it still wouldn't let me resize and my copy of partitionmagic only works up to XP, so that was a no-go.

I've now downloaded gparted and split the big partition into 2, and told it to format the second partition NTFS.

Here's the kicker. Creating the partition took 2.5 hours. Now it's...hell, I don't know what it's doing, it's still saying 0 of 2 steps completed and "moving sba to left and resizing to xxx". It also says 4 hours remaining.

What the hell?

It also tells me that if I stop it, I will likely have severe filesystem errors. I don't really care, because I'm wiping the system anyway. What I don't want to happen is have the disk be unreadable.

I've partitioned a million drives before. I've never heard of it taking 6 hours.

So, to wit...I don't care about any files on this thing right now. XP and 7 will be the dual-boot choices.

What to do, what to do?

Get my dual-boot back

jozxyqk — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:12:09 -0800

DualBootFilter: I've moved a Windows XP hard drive into a new machine, in a physically different configuration, and I think I need to fix boot.ini and maybe the mbr but I'm not sure how. Difficulty: new location is a secondary drive to a primary Linux drive running GRUB. Help? OK so I've done some googling and even searching of askmefi, but I am feeling dumb about this so I need someone to spell it out for me.

Here's the longer story:
I used to have a dual-boot setup, with Linux as the primary boot device, running GRUB, as Primary IDE disk. Windows was a SATA disk, plugged in as the first SATA drive.

Now, I've got a new Linux installation that's on a SATA drive, and want to be able to boot the old Windows as well.
Linux is now the first SATA drive, and Windows is the second.
Linux is running GRUB, and recognizes the Windows partition as something bootable. From within Linux, I can even mount the NTFS partition and read and write files.
Unfortunately, when I try to boot the Windows partition, I get a blue screen that flashes by too fast (looks more like a chkdsk screen than a BSOD, if I blink), followed by a reboot which brings me back to my GRUB menu.
I've narrowed this down to probably being an issue with boot.ini, but a Windows XP bootable cd doesn't seem to be able to see the partition with the "bootcfg" command at all, so I can't use those tools.
I'd love to be able to use some magic to edit boot.ini in a text editor and at least get that Windows installation booting to Safe Mode.
I've tried a few things, but I get a variety of different errors depending on where I modify the numbers, from "Cannot load hal.dll" to "your boot device is corrupt"

So, hivemind, what can I do to convince the Windows drive that it can boot, without corrupting GRUB? Or is the blue-screen-that-passes-by telling me something worse is wrong?

The (original) contents of the boot.ini in question:

[boot loader]

timeout=30

default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS

[operating systems]

multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect

and the contents of the "Windows XP" section of my grub/menu.lst:

title		Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

rootnoverify	(hd1,0)

savedefault

makeactive

map		(hd0) (hd1)

map		(hd1) (hd0)

chainloader	+1

How can I make windows play nice with itself?

T.D. Strange — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:44:21 -0800

How can I dual boot XP and Vista on my Vaio when all I have is the factory recovery Vista disc and a "XP downgrade" disc? I want to dual boot XP and Vista on my Vaio laptop. I have the following:

- the Vista recovery discs that I made when I first got the laptop
- An XP "downgrade" disc that I got from Sony

The problem is that both sets of discs go through the Sony recovery console before actually installing the operating system, restoring the system to the factory default setting. There's no chance to stop the process once it gets going, and there's no partitioning options to speak of. Both discs format the entire drive and install the system in one big partition.

I don't own another legit copy of either operating system, and the laptop has enough quirky drivers that it's not really practical to install anythign other than the factory system anyway. Is there any way for me to dual boot both systems?

I know my way around computers and can use tools like nlite, vlite, grub, whatever is needed. Im just not sure where to start.

RIP Mac... help me make Windows not suck

sindas — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 11:24:06 -0800

Long time Mac guy stuck for the foreseeable future using Windows. I'm out of the loop, but very computer literate. Looking for the BEST software for everything. What can't you live without? I was a Mac kid, a PC teenager, and switched back to Macs after high school. My Mac broke, and I'm broke. So now I'm stuck with my PC I built a while ago. I'm fully computer literate (built the PC) but I am totally out of the 'PC loop'. I am used to reading sites like The Unofficial Apple Weblog... Help me get back up to speed!

Already given up on trying to replace my tricked out Quicksilver setup. I'm running Google Chrome (couldn't be happier), Digsby instead of Adium.. I use Gmail through Chrome. I run a lot of music production and graphic design software and have a dual monitor setup.

Also running FileZilla, Picasa, and InfraRecorder...

Looking directly for these types of software:
Text editing (Replace TextMate for me please)
App launching (Someone port Quicksilver for me)
iCal (I use Google's Cal, but it just doesn't "feel right")
File Organization (Hazel...?)
iTunes global hotkeying

+ anything else you can't live without!

(bonus question for extra credit: point me at a great article for dual booting Ubuntu and XP 64bit, starting with a clean drive.. )

Can a Linux Logical Volume Manager be read by Windows?

lukemeister — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:50:33 -0800

Can an LVM partition be mounted by Windows XP or Vista? I dual boot Fedora 9 and XP Pro on one machine, and Fedora 9 and Vista Home Premium on the other. I've been using ext3 on Fedora because I can mount it from Windows, but was wondering whether any Windows software now supports LVM. Thanks.

Help me understand Boot Camp and its limitations, please!

DMan — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 18:09:42 -0800

I'm purchasing an iMac sometime this weekend (yay!) and I'm trying to figure out how I want to partition the drive for Boot Camp... So I'm getting a new iMac, and as a computer engineering student I can definitely see where I'll want to test hardware or software on multiple platforms--Windows XP is a necessity, and I'd love to have Vista and Linux if possible.

So, first off, is this possible? I've seen some stuff recently about Linux being difficult to install on a Mac with Boot Camp, is that true? And also, can I have both a XP and Vista installation on my computer, on separate partitions? I have OEM versions of both OS's.

If this is possible, what's the best way for me to partition the drive, space-wise? Out of the 3 I'd like to install (XP, Vista, and Linux) I know for a fact I'll be using XP the most, mainly for gaming but also for Office and a few other Windows-only apps. So I was thinking about 60GB for XP, and the bare minimum for Ubuntu. So assuming I can install all those OS's, how much space should I save for each one? I'd rather partition it all at once rather than go back and do it later.

My final question is a bit more simple. Would I be able to create a separate partition on the drive to store my music? Rather than create a new copy of the music on each partition, I'd rather have a separate "Music" drive. I can't use an external because the only one I have is going to be used for Time Machine.

To recap:

- Can I install Windows XP, Vista, and Ubuntu on my iMac along with Leopard?

- What's the minimum space I'd need for Vista and Ubuntu? Drive is a 500GB; I'd like to leave, at bare minimum, 300GB free on the Leopard partition.

- Can I easily create a separate partition for music? About 20 GB would be all I'd need.

Thanks for all the help! I'm new to Apple computers, so this should be interesting.

One version of Windows isn't enough, I need three!

Snyder — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 02:27:12 -0800

Will Windows 98 and XP run and dual boot (or, treble boot, I suppose,) with my new Vista running computer? I'm being given a slightly used computer that is currently is running Vista, but I'd like to bring over my hard drives from my current computer. Right now, I have two hard disks, one with Windows 98 and one with XP, and I have a dual boot setup. The computer I want to move them two is a Dell Inspiron 531S, an ACPIx86-based machine, with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ 2009 Mhz, 958 Megs RAM, and the BIOS is Dell Inc, 1.0.3 6/15/2007. This is all I can easily find out at the moment, since I didn't buy the computer originally and I'm not used to Vista.

To be brief, can I run a triple boot system with Vista, Win98 and XP with this hardware? My idea is to have the backwards compatibility of 98 with the robustness of XP, while Vista gets itself sorted out. Any adivce in that direction too would be appreciated. Thanks for the help.

Cross Platform Lab Management software?

crios — Sat, 17 May 2008 21:07:30 -0800

Does anybody know a way that we can manage dual boot Macs regardless of what OS they are booted into. I work in a high school and we are going to be placing about 30 dual boot Macs (Mac OS 10.5 and Windows XP) in a lab. We currently use Crosstec SchoolVue to manage Windows Machines and in our Mac lab we use ARD (Apple Remote Desktop). Does anybody know a way that we can manage the dual boot machines regardless of what OS they are booted into. The basics we are looking for in lab managament software is: screen locking, logging out, shutting down, restarting, sending messages, remote viewing, remote controlling.

Any ideas? I suppose we could have 2 machines, 1 Mac and 1 windows that would cover the lab and the machines regardless of the OS they are booted into but it would be nice to have a cross platform solution.

How can I install Ubuntu alongside XP without being able to boot from a DVD drive?

christopherbdnk — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 16:22:47 -0800

I've recently purchased a new external USB DVD drive, as I do not have a floppy drive or internal CD/DVD drive on this windows PC. I am trying to set it up now for dual-booting Solaris+Ubuntu but, even after updating the BIOS (Phoenix 6.00) I cannot boot a USB drive. First, does anyone have a way I could somehow add USB drivers as a boot option (along with XP), so that I can then add Solaris and Ubuntu (making it four options at boot)? Less useful, is there another BIOS worth trying? (mobo = Abit BD7II i845E updated to most recent bios on Abit's site for this mobo)

Or, is there a way of installing Ubuntu and Solaris from within Windows XP?

thanks
christopher

Young Pooterstein

Huplescat — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:41:25 -0800

I have some novice questions about a re-install with dual booting in Windows XP. More inside.... My computer is a little over four years old and has fallen bit by bit into the ranks of the walking wounded. Now I’m hearing a pronounced whirring from the hard drive on start-up and a couple more times during the five minutes or so that it takes to boot up. It used to boot a lot faster and, for that matter, do everything a lot faster.

It had some problems before but everything pretty much went to hell when I screwed up while renewing my AVG subscription and set its virus vault free to wreck havoc. Now I know better, and I’ve caught a lot of that stuff with various free programs. Nevertheless it looks like the system will never be the same again, and I suspect my hard drive might have been near the end of its useful life anyway.

In any case, over the last year or so I picked up a virgin copy of Win XP and an 80 gig external hard-drive and I still have my old CDs that I used for the initial install plus a reinstallation CD from Dell for Win XP service pack 1a.

Can I just install everything on the new hard drive and forget about the old one or should I tear the old one out?

Will I be able to tap back into the old drive without malware crossing over and infecting the new one?

I don’t know much so any and all insights are greatly appreciated.

Setting up a Linux-Mac OS X Dual Boot?

WCityMike — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 14:27:00 -0800

I would like to make my Intel iMac dual boot a Linux variant. I'd appreciate any help you could provide me. Specific questions inside. First, I'd appreciate it if you could explain the difference to me between a window manager and a Linux operating system. For example, there is GNOME and KDE, and my understanding is that these are window managers -- and there is Ubuntu and Red Hat, which are operating systems, yes? What does a window manager do that an operating system doesn't? I'm so used to seeing operating systems that are integrated with their window managers (i.e. Mac OS X and Windows) that I'm not sure I understand where one ends and the other begins. What window managers would you recommend? What variant of Linux would you recommend? I'm leaning towards Ubuntu, since I've heard it referred to the most on Lifehacker.

Second, I must admit, I'm slightly nervous. Even though this is moderately major surgery on my Mac, I'd appreciate any reassurance you can give. I do backup, but my backup drive isn't large enough to backup everything; right now it's got everything but my music backed up, and for obvious reasons, I'd rather not lose all my music. (A large chunk of it is backed up on DVD, but most definitely not all.) My understanding is that Apple's Boot Camp application can alter the partitions on my hard drive without erasing what's there already ... even if I'm not installing Windows.

As that relates, the instructions I am planning to work off of are both here and here. I'm wondering if there is a "Complete Idiot's Guide to Setting Up a Dual-Boot on Your Mac with Linux" website that is even simpler ... or if you guys have "dumb-dumb" instructions to follow. I can follow these directions fine, but if I would just like to lower the chance of me doing something stupid while setting this up. (BTW, I can anticipate someone saying, "Linux isn't for dummies, and if you're concerned about it being over your head, you shouldn't attempt this dual boot." To which I'd reply that I'm purposefully underestimating my skills here because I'd rather more safely follow idiot-level instructions than somewhat perilously follow moderate-level instructions. But my request for idiot-level instructions shouldn't be interpreted to mean that I am an idiot.)

Finally, any advice as to Linux variant? Or window manager? Or applications? (Preferably with linkage?) Or general anecdotes about what to do as a Linux beginner?

Why am I doing this? Well, I have pretty much tweaked everything I want to tweak on my Mac, and I would like a new operating system to play around with, and Windows XP might have some interest for me, but it's $190 on Amazon for even just the Home Edition, which is about $190 more than Linux.

Can Vista and XP be dual booted from separate disks?

hwestiii — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:41:29 -0800

Is it possible to dual boot Windows Vista and Windows XP Pro if each are installed on separate hard drives? I just bought a Toshiba Satellite A135-S4487 laptop that came loaded with two separate hard drives, one holding 120 GB and the other holding 100 GB. It also came loaded with Vista Home Premium which I don't really want, but, having paid for it, don't really want to throw away either.

I've understood in the past that XP, and I presume Vista, get pretty proprietary about the drives they are installed on, and may not permit the use of conventional boot loaders to control which system the machine boots into, but since I have two physical drives, I thought there might be a way around it.

The BIOS setup screen allows the boot order to be set explicitly, so I'm thinking that I might be able to install XP Pro on the second hard drive and then switch between systems by setting one or the other hard drive to be first in the boot order depending upon what I need to do.

Dualboot Media Player

philomathoholic — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 13:39:59 -0800

What's the best media player that works in both OS's in a dual boot setup (XP and Unix) ? Ideally, I would like to listen to my music in either OS, while retaining "last played time" "ratings", etc. I already have my music on a separate FAT partition, so any OS can read/write to/from it.

Some half-ideas I've come up with: Run a program with versions in both OS's and that use the same database file (but which program allows this?). Stream the music somehow, and just find any player that will play streams in each OS (this doesn't seem to solve the problem, but it might offer more options). Use a program written in an interpreted language (the base layer is installed in each OS).

(I'm trying to convert to Unix, and this is one of the critical functions that I must have during my transition.)

How do I dual boot XP Pro and XP MCE

BodieRyan — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 16:30:06 -0800

I bought an Alienware Aurora laptop a couple months ago which I configured with Windows Media Center Edition. everything has been working great and I like MCE but I have started to do some recording of music and it seems that hardware and software in the recording world is almost universally incompatible with MCE, so I bought XP Pro and I want to dual boot the two of them, I made a 10GB partition and put Pro on there, it runs but explore seems real slow, and I have to switch the primary boot partition from inside windows using a disk manager program and its a pain, I want to dual boot from startup, any tips? Thank you!

Help me boot into windows with a broken bootloader and no installation media...

handee — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 08:52:06 -0800

I've messed up my boot loader. I have a (working, legal) XP installation, but it won't boot, and I don't have any Windows installation media. How can I fix it? Linux, Windows and general stupidity feature in the creation of the problem, and getting the computer ready to give away in time for Christmas is the aim. I'm giving my old laptop away at Xmas. The recipient is unlikely to want the dual-boot-ness, so I had two tasks on my hands.

1. Change the boot-loader (grub)
2. Reformat /dev/hda3 from ext3 to something Windows can see.

But Dr Stupid here did the tasks in the wrong order, and using fdisk I f-ed the disk before dealing with grub. Grub now gives me error 17 (cannot recognise filesystem). So I can't boot into Windows or.

All the recovery software is all on the hard disk already and despite having a legal copy of XP I don't have any media (cheers, PC World). All I have to do to access the recovery software is to press F10 during boot to use it. Except that won't work, 'cause grub intercepts the boot process.

So how can I overwrite the grub bootloader in order to boot directly into Windows, bypassing all grubbiness?

I have installation and livecd versions of ubuntu, and am assuming that if I boot into XP once, I should be able to tell it to overwrite the MBR itself (bonus question - once in XP, how do I do this?).

How do I dual boot Ubuntu and XP using entirely different disks?

torpark — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 06:57:09 -0800

How do I dual boot Ubuntu and XP using entirely different disks? I have tried all the suggestions others have claiming that ubuntu will recognize XP and add it to GRUB, but it simply doesn't do so. It results in either "unable to start operating system" error, or it just loads XP as normal. I have tried using two partitions on the same disk, with XP installed first. I have tried using two partitions on different disk, XP installed first. I simply have no idea why this works for everyone else but grub/dapper drake is so stupid now. What I want is to have XP on the second drive (larger), linux on first drive, and have grub be a boot manager.

Can someone tell me how to actually do this, instead of "Load XP first, then Ubunutu and it will recognize it and add it to Grub" because that simply does NOT work apparently.

Vista, XP & Ubunty Tripple Boot on a Software Raid?

chrisWhite — Sat, 09 Sep 2006 18:40:29 -0800

I managed to trash my partitions today trying to install Vista RC1 and dual boot XP (my fault, I did something stupid). Anyway. Since I'm starting from scratch I was thinking it would be amazing to install Vista, XP & Ubuntu, but I'm not sure I can even do that. My problem is that I'm doing a software Raid (0) of my system drive. I know with my old computer it looked like a nightmare to get Ubuntu and XP to share a software raid and I was hoping maybe things have improved, or that my new motherboard/raid controller might work better now though. What do you think? Can it be done? Thanks! System Specs:
Motherboard: Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe/Wireless Edition
2 60GB Raptors in a Raid Zero
- Raid 0 SATA using the NForce controller, not the Silicon Image one.
AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (AM2)
2 GB Ram
Dual XFX NVidia 7600 GT (usuall running one per monitor, not in SLI mode).

WinXP install on an iMac: OEM vs Full Retail Boxed versions

I, Credulous — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 09:55:47 -0800

I want to install WinXP on my new iMac DuoCore. Is there a difference between using an OEM install disk (legal original) and a full boxed retail install disk? There's a big difference in price (yes, *gasp* I'm going to pay for it!), and if I can use an OEM version, I will.

Anyone had any problems (fatal problems, please, not general new-installation-type problems) installing from an OEM disk?

thanks for any insight.

Does booting often hurt my computer?

visual mechanic — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 21:02:11 -0800

Does booting a computer often lower its life expectancy? I just did the boot camp xp and osx process on my macbook pro. I have 1 application that is windows only that I use once a day. it now occurs to me that I will be booting my laptop at least twice a day to run that software, whereas I used to boot my macs once a week.

Will this cause my hardware to fail more quickly? I've always loved how long my macs last. If it will hurt the computer, I'll switch to a virtualization solution like Parallels.

Dual boot - XP and Ubuntu

lunkfish — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 02:38:26 -0800

How can I set up my dual boot system with Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux? I've got a dual boot system at the moment with 2 Windows XP partitions and 2 partitions for data and audio files. I use partition magic 8 to manage partitions.

I want to replace one of the XP partitions with Ubuntu, and give also juggle the partition sizes around. I understand that during install I will have the option to give Ubuntu it's own data partition.

What utility can I use on startup to select which OS partition to boot? I've got a utility with partition magic, but have had problems with it.

Will partitions created with partition magic and those done with Ubuntu be 'compatible' i.e. will they all be seen by both OS's or do I have to do this from scratch with a different program somehow?

Problems with GRUB and dual-booting

SpecialK — Tue, 12 Oct 2004 16:15:38 -0800

Linux Filter: Had to re-install XP on a dual-boot machine because I borked it. It overwrote the MBR, where Grub was installed. How do I get GRUB back on the computer, and seeing my linux partition?