Reply to: Dual booting

[JoJoGabor]

I _think_ you can boot from the XP CD and perform a repair on your Install. Select to go to the cmd line and type help for a list of commands. Something like fixmbr and fixboot should fix it.

I haven't tested this - just something I remember from my past

[TheFaQQer]

There must be a way of fixing that without reinstalling the OS?

I'm sure there is.

Since my installation of eBusiness Suite failed on the unsupported version of SUSE I was using, I gave up and installed it on Windows instead.

[pmeswani]

IIRC, you have to be a little bit careful with an USB drive.

If you don't put the boot loader on the hard drive (i.e. put everything on the USB drive), then you end up with a machine that can only boot when the external drive is plugged in!!

Sadly, I speak from experience

There must be a way of fixing that without reinstalling the OS?

[Fred Bloggs]

IIRC, you have to be a little bit careful with an USB drive.

If you don't put the boot loader on the hard drive (i.e. put everything on the USB drive), then you end up with a machine that can only boot when the external drive is plugged in!!

Sadly, I speak from experience

Wow, that's a pitfall worth avoiding!

[TheFaQQer]

I can confirm that Ubuntu and OpenSuse install "out of the box" with grub boot loader. However, I have not yet found a way to go back to a single Windows OS (removing Grub and Linux) afterwards without reformatting and reinstalling Windows. Using a bootable USB device to test it out seems like a good idea to me.

IIRC, you have to be a little bit careful with an USB drive.

If you don't put the boot loader on the hard drive (i.e. put everything on the USB drive), then you end up with a machine that can only boot when the external drive is plugged in!!

Sadly, I speak from experience

[Fred Bloggs]

I can confirm that Ubuntu and OpenSuse install "out of the box" with grub boot loader. However, I have not yet found a way to go back to a single Windows OS (removing Grub and Linux) afterwards without reformatting and reinstalling Windows. Using a bootable USB device to test it out seems like a good idea to me.

[pmeswani]

that is exactly what i'm after! i assume GRUB or the like will be installed on the USB drive?

Most likely. However, I think some distros still have lilo as backup. I'm yet to install linux on my external drive... but won't get round to doing it any time soon.

[xoggoth]

It was a long time ago DaveB so very hazy on details but I did all the obvious things and used all the tools that should have worked but no way could I ever recover the UNIX partition or reformat the entire drive.

[scooby]

Buy an external USB drive and make sure that the bios allows you to boot from the USB drive first and install Linux on this drive. Linux will come with a boot manager that should allow you to boot between Linux and Windows. However, if you install it correctly (not sure how), you can remove the USB drive and allow Vista to boot up without any third party boot managers.

HTH

that is exactly what i'm after! i assume GRUB or the like will be installed on the USB drive?

[pmeswani]

Currently got a laptop running with Vista pro clean install.

Is there any dual booting software i can download and install now so i can run linux as a dual boot? i probably want to remove the dual boot if the linux doesnt work (expected as it struggles for drivers on a Virt PC).

Buy an external USB drive and make sure that the bios allows you to boot from the USB drive first and install Linux on this drive. Linux will come with a boot manager that should allow you to boot between Linux and Windows. However, if you install it correctly (not sure how), you can remove the USB drive and allow Vista to boot up without any third party boot managers.

HTH

[DaveB]

Unix partition worked ok when I tried it but recovering the space again if you ever need to is another matter.

Re-run the install process and use the Linux partition tool to put it all back together again. That or just reformat the partition from Windows and keep it as a sperate drive letter.

[xoggoth]

Unix partition worked ok when I tried it but recovering the space again if you ever need to is another matter.

[Scotchpie]

Most linux distro's allow you to repartition if required and install a boot loader as part of the install process. Shouldn't need anything extra.

All the main modern distro's these days automatically partition the disk for you - you don't have to do anything. If you want a custom partition added (separating out the /home and /usr directories for example) then choose manual partitioning. No need for third party software. Just put in the disk and away you go.

[DaveB]

Currently got a laptop running with Vista pro clean install.

Is there any dual booting software i can download and install now so i can run linux as a dual boot? i probably want to remove the dual boot if the linux doesnt work (expected as it struggles for drivers on a Virt PC).

Most linux distro's allow you to repartition if required and install a boot loader as part of the install process. Shouldn't need anything extra.

[voodooflux]

This any good?