Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with xp and dualboot

Dual booting Leopard and Windows without a blank cd or dvd?

yaymukund — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 11:45:44 -0800

I would like to install Windows XP on my Macbook Pro (running Leopard) with a Windows XP image (iso) and an external drive but without a blank CD. The end goal is to dual boot XP and Leopard, preferably without erasing my current Leopard install.

I bypassed Boot Camp's CD/DVD check by mounting the image using Toast Titanium, so it reboots successfully. Obviously, after restarting the laptop the Windows install CD isn't found and it starts Leopard as usual. If I can restore the Windows image on a flash drive and restart, it should work, right? Right??

rEFIt and grub are also possible solutions, as long as the boot camp drivers work. The easy method (by far) is to get a blank CD/DVD but I would like to finish this today if possible.

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.

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.

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.

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 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).

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.