General :: Non Destructive Install (dual Boot)
Jun 29, 2010
It's been a while since I last installed a Linux distro on a machine that already houses another OS. I want to install OpenSuse (11.2) on a spare external drive that I have which will be connected to my PC through USB. The PC however, houses four other drives: one drive that has WinXP installed on it (NTFS) which is my normal boot drive, and three data drives - all NTFS.
Like I said, I want to install OpenSuse on the external drive through a network install. I don't want to end up with a boot menu where I can choose between OpenSuse and XP, I simply want to boot from the XP drive by default and boot from the USB drive when I tell my system to do so (I can call up a boot menu where I can tell my PC from which drive to boot).
Now I have done this many times - albeit too long ago to remember how I did it. I do remember however that last time I tried to do it, it installed a boot menu on my XP boot drive, and I had a hell of a time removing it. What do I need to look out for to prevent this from happening? How do I make sure nothing is changed on the other four drives? (The safest way would be to simply disconnect the other four drives from my system and install OpenSuse on the USB drive of course
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Sep 7, 2009
I have a PC with three HD's. My primary hard drive has a single partition and contains Win XP SP3. I have a second hard drive which I use to store junk (pictures, movies, etc). The third, 60GB HD, I just put into my PC and I wanted to install Fedora 11 onto it. I want to have a dual boot system with WinXP being the default boot. I downloaded the latest build of Fedora 11, created a LiveCD out of it and I tried to install the OS onto this third new hard drive. I installed the OS, I told it to use the entire third HD and to have a dual boot setup and make the WinXP OS be the default boot. The installation seemed to go without any problems. However, after restarting the PC, the PC stops booting right after the DELL screen. It gives me a cursor and that's it. It just sits there. I have tried redoing the install about 4 different times now and no matter how I change the different installation options, I get the same result. Now I can't even boot into XP even after I disconnect the third drive. I am guessing that the dual boot got screwed up; I just don't know how to fix it and more importantly, how to install Fedora, dual boot.
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Apr 11, 2010
I want to dual boot kubuntu. I am a linux noob so have basically no experience with linux except what i have done of the live cd. My problem is that when I get to the part of the installer relating to partitions. It wont allow me to select the free space I have shrunk off my windows/data partition. it calls the space unusable and will not allow me to proceed when it is selected. Shouldn't the installer turn the free space into a partition for kubuntu to install to? The installer also show a bar wich marks off the partitions and how much each one takes up it does recongnize that there is free space because it tells me that I have 25 gb free.
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Mar 13, 2010
i installed windows 7 successfully. When I installed it,I created 40 gb of unallocated space in the hard disk for the Fedora installation. However, whenever i start the partition editor during the Fedora installation, it says that there is no free space in your hardware, even though it shows 40gb space in the disk partition table.
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Jun 30, 2010
I am planing to install fedora 13 on my dual boot (windows-7 + fedora) laptop. Previously some one helped me installing fedora on my laptop. Below let me mention the my file system architecture as the question is related to it. It's a 320 GB hard drive.
1. First 250 MB primary partition (used to be for /boot, which is currently unallocated, because in last installation I chose fedora to install automatically).
2. Next 120 GB windows primary partition.
3. Next 200 GB Logical partition
a. First 125 GB for windows backup
b. rest for Linux (500 MB + 60 GB).
As Linux was installed later thus it wrote the boot partition itself. I want the boot partition in the first 250 MB partition (reason, to be safe, I don't want to mess up with the master boot record while playing with Linux), also need to install fedora 13. The architecture I want is following:
1. first 250 MB: /boot
2. Next 120 GB: Windows
3. Logical:
a. First 125 GB: Windows backup.
b. Next 4 GB: /swap
c. Rest: /root -- I want to install Fedora here
So, what I plan to do is to whip out all the current Linux file systems and insert fedora dvd and install according to my criteria!
Now my questions are:
1. since currently Linux has the master boot record, will it cause any problem for the machine to boot up from installation dvd, if I whip off all the current Linux partitions? (Or in other words, does installation/ live-CD need a master boot record to boot? -- I am guessing once I reinstall Linux, booting is not a problem).
2. Once Linux is whipped off, can windows boot up automatically?
3. Is there any worry of messing up windows, specially its boot sector(off course I will take precaution not touching windows partitions!)
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Apr 19, 2011
this is my first thread. Just installed Desktop Kubuntu Natty 11.04 x86_64 and have been amazed by its possibilities. I would like though to install a second OS which is free-ware and unlike Kubuntu but as powerful and userfriendly. Would anyone recommend the followinf?
FreeBSD?
Fedora?
Mandriva?
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Apr 23, 2010
Have older system, self-built around 2000 or so. My plan is to optimize the system for speed and utility, upgrade the OS from W2000 Pro to XP Pro, and include dual boot so as to install some version/distro (?) of Linux to learn on. Present system: X86 based (32 bit), using a P4, 1.8 GHz/400 MHz fsb, with 512mb of DDR RAM installed, can upgrade to 2 gigs total.Shuttle MV42 motherboard, including onboard video and sound (S3 Graphics ProSavage DDR P4M266/VIA 8751/8233 chipset, VIA AC'97 Audio Controller, 2.2 compliant)
If I should decide to use the available 160 gig drive as a dual boot system, in order to install both XP and some version of Linux, how should I set it up? How many partitions will XP and Linux need or work with best? How much space for each OS? What file systems? Should I format/partition it with the existing W2000 OS? What comes first, the chicken or the egg? (XP or Linux?) I have read somewhere that it matters which OS is installed first, due to boot records being overwritten by successive OS installs. I plan to keep W2000 on the first HDD at least until I move my files over to XP. Will I need to switch the master/slave designations after installing XP and Linux on the new drive, since I will want to boot from that drive?
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Jan 4, 2010
I have try to install fedora 11 with windows XP dual boot, but when fedora 11 is install, it will compeletly remove the already installed windows XP, while fedora 8, it works nice with windows XP, and is good dual boot OS at the same time.if any thing is new in fedora 11 or 12 with respect to dual booting,
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Apr 21, 2011
I have a 160 GB Spaced 'HP Mini 1000' partitioned to two 80 GB drives. On one of them, Windows XP is already installed.
I would like to create a dual boot so that the other empty drive has Ubuntu Netbook edition 10.10.
I am a newbie with Linux, well versed with Windows and decided to venture with learning Linux by doing this.
So far, I have just downloaded the Netbook Edition from the following link.
[url]
How should I go about installing the Ubuntu netbook edition to dual boot with XP?
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Apr 16, 2011
My Toshiba Satellite 5205-S705 laptop with Win XP Home sp3 has a non-working cd drive, is riddled with viruses, and isn't capable of booting to a USB drive. (please no comments about paperweights etc., it's all I have!) I want to install a Linux dual-boot version that is heavy on antivirus scanning support. Since I can't boot to an .iso disk, is there any other way to do this? I can transfer files to it via USB thumbdrive or download via Internet.
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Aug 2, 2010
How do I install SDL (and other libraries) onto my dual-boot (XP/Xubuntu) computer? With only what came on the Xubuntu disk, I am able to play Oolite at what seems to be 1000 FPS, and Torcs at about 70 FPS.
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Jul 6, 2011
Basically what it says in the subject. In the Allocate Drive Space part of installation theres 'replace Windows 7 with Ubuntu' and 'Something else' but nothing for installing them alongside each other, which I want to do.
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Apr 29, 2011
Dual Boot Gone Bad I have been trying to set up a dual boot laptop on an old Dell Inspiron 2600. I got the machine cheap, and it is in excellent condition. I have upgraded the Bios to A11 (it was A4 when I got it) and put in a 40 Gig HD. It is maxed-out in memory at 360 Mb. It has the awful (by today's standards) Intel i810 video mess. I created an NTFS (primary) partition on the first half of the drive and installed XP, updated through SP3. I then attempted to install Debian 6 (squeeze) on the second half. I was unable to get anywhere with an installation using a squeeze Live CD. The screen just goes blank about 60 seconds into the installation, and everything freezes up. In rescue mode, I can get some screen play, but the rendering is awful and half of what you do is actually off the screen and you can't see what it is you are doing.
I hooked up a separate monitor, and was able to watch the installation just fine until it reached a certain point in the boot-up, then everything again went blank and the machine again froze up. I tried Ubuntu 10.10, Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, Mint 10, and Ultimate Edition 10.10 with varying degrees of success, but none completing and working.
The Ubuntu 10.04 LTS actually installed, but I could not get sufficient graphics in either a terminal (entered at the end of the install process just before re-booting) or booting to text only mode to sudo a change to the xorg.conf file that was native to the system, rather than to the installation package itself (which goes away when you reboot).
I was able to install 'squeeze' using the 'expert graphical install' mode under 'advanced options' (it lets you select a screen resolution when it starts the install), and when I got to the end of the installation, before re-booting, I told the system to open a monitor as 'root', and wrote what I thought would have been an appropriate xorg.conf file in the /etc/X11 subdirectory using nano (monitor and driver specs, as well as suggested xorg.conf entries obtained elsewhere on the web).
[Code]...
I'M SO CLOSE! Can somebody help me and tell me how to edit GRUB so it again recognizes the partition... or reinstall GRUB.... or let me know if the problem is with the XP MBR.... And if so, maybe hopefully lead me to how to fix THAT issue without screwing up the Debian install (I know this isn't an "UGH"- Windows forum). If worst come to worst, I can delete all the Linux partitions, use my Windows install disk to repair the MBR, and reinstall lenny.... Hopefully with GRUB not losing XP this time. I hate to do it because it has taken me a couple of days to get ANY form of Linux actually working right on this machine..... but at least I know how to do it now and what distro will actually work.
Also, anybody with a clue as to why squeeze won't boot after what appears to be a successful installation (with the above-listed xorg.conf file in place) and what I can do to fix that issue would also be appreciated. It will be nice to have a system installed that has current support next year.
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Jan 5, 2011
I just received my Slackware 13.1 & the 'Official Guide to Slackware Linux' book. I know that there is a big learning curve to use Slackware and that is why I purchased it - according to Distrowatch, "...if you learn Slackware, you learn Linux!" But, while I am 'learning Linux', I would still like to have a linux distro installed that would be more of a 'no-brainer'.
So the question is, which distro should I install first, Slackware or say, OpenSuse? I know that if I were going to dual-boot with XP, that XP should be installed first - does order matter for 2 linux distros too? Also, are there any points to remember to do during the installation processes so that I end up with a working, dual-boot computer?
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Jan 6, 2011
it started with rooting my Motorola Droid. I got quite interested in the whole rooting/linux "world". The only problem is, my hands move A LOT faster than my brain does. I'm an "educated novice" at best when it comes to all of this and still learning slowly, but surely. I followed an online tutorial and before I realized quite what i'd done, I had dual installed Ubuntu linux 10.10 on my laptop. ISO'd this, partitioned that and realized....i'm in way over my head. Then I started researching how to just go back in time and get my "safe" windows vista back until I'm ready to make the switch to linux and just ended up getting more confused.
How do I actually BOOT into Windows on a dual boot computer that I apparently just created? How, if need be, do I undo everything I just did in the past few hours and careless tinkering? If I decide to stay with Linux, how do I get my damn wireless router to recognize?
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Feb 14, 2010
I turn back to openSUSE and install it in my machine (win7 installed first),but i can't boot from win7. openSUSE doesn't boot from win7 (like ubuntu) and i can't see ntfs win7 partition from openSUSE. Why openSUSE is so complicated about dual booting
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May 26, 2011
I'm trying to dual-boot Windows 7 with openSuSE 11.4, i was told that i should install SuSE after windows 7 as it takes care of the boot-loader and automatically detects my windows installation and not vice-versa,
But that is not true in my case.
So i had 2 hard disks one had windows 7 installed and one was empty so i decided that i should get openSuSE 11.4 on the empty hard disk and dual-boot it with windows 7 (that i already had installed). Downloaded the DVD, put it on a USB and installed SuSE on the other hard disk normally, it detected my windows installation on my main hard disk but i didn't touch that, only formatted my other hard disk to ext4
After the installation it booted automatically into SuSE, but now every time on a fresh restart the system boots automatically into windows. Methods i have already tried to resolve this and it didn't work:
1. Booted from the DVD and selected an "Upgrade" not "New Installation" so i could boot again into my SuSE installation which did work, checked my "Boot Loader" options from YaST and checked the "Boot from MBR" option instead of the "Boot from root partition" option, That Did NOT work.
2. Used the same method to Boot into SuSE with the "Upgrade" Option opened up the terminal and tried to install grub manually again using this link
[Code]...
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Sep 25, 2010
I have recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 on a Compaq Presario V3000.
To prepare the install, I freed about 15 GB of space, booted from an USB. I chose "use largest continous free space" when it got to that point and then proceeded with the rest.
Now when I choose vista it will not load properly, here's what happens:
1.Windows says loading windows files.
2.After a while, I have to choose a language.
3.Windows looks for operating systems to repair.
If I choose not to, it will take me to a menu where I can choose to fix boot problems, command line, etc...
Linux is running very well, vista is the problem here, I have a recovery disk*, but I wanted to ask you guys if that is the correct move. I really need to keep windows to run some windows only apps.
*This disk was burnt on another computer, an HP from a friend who has the same vista edition. Will this work? This computer's burner is broken..
This is actually something for my gf, she has an account on my computer(only ubuntu on it) and uses it often (Mendley, Zotero, and sciency things in general). She loved it and asked me to install a dual boot with her win system. She use SPSS for whatever kind of statistical analysis it does and she likes ms office better then open office, and I would like to leave her with the choice....
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Oct 19, 2010
I am trying to install Ubuntu on a machine that already has Windows 7 on one partition. Obviously I intend to install it on the other free partition. So I downloaded the iso burnt it onto the disk and pop in the disk and the boot the machine. The installation screen comes up I selected the first option (Try Ubuntu without installation), I just see a prompt after a few seconds and then the screen goes blank and nothing happens. Unable to detect a signal, The monitor goes into standby. The same thing happens if I use "install Ubuntu" option as well. I downloaded minimal install version Ubuntu and tried to install with that. since its old school installation, the installation completed without any errors, but when I restart the grub come up and when I select to boot into Ubuntu, I see the same behavior i.e. the screen goes blank and never boots to anything. This is a machine on which I was using 10.4 until yesterday.
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Jul 9, 2011
I'm having a frustrating time trying to install Ubuntu as a dual boot with Windows 7 on a new Acer Aspire 5750.The initial install proceeded without incident until an error along the lines of "Cannot install GRUB to /dev/sda".I continued without installing GRUB, and attempted to install GRUB from the live CD:Code:sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mntsudo grub-setup -d /mnt/boot/grub /dev/sdaThis installed GRUB, but only linking to my Windows 7 partition (sda2).
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Apr 27, 2011
I did a fresh install of SuSE 11.4 (WIN7 TOO) and changed my Larger HD1 to the first HD. I was installing and got this error first: the boot loader is installed on a partition that does not lie entirely below 128GB The system might not boot if BIOS supports only lba24 (result is error during install grub mbr) status loc dev/sdb6
I continued with the install and then got:
Yast2 error occured
while installing GRUB ver 0.97 (640k lower/3072k upper memory)
[minimal bash-like lineediting is supported? for the first word, TAB lists possible command completition anywhere else TAB lists possible completion of a device/filename]
grub setup --stage2=/boot/grub/stage2 --force4-lba (hd0,5) (hd0,5)
Error 25
disk read error
grub> quit
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Jul 21, 2010
It would be convenient if i could simply install 11.3 along side my Ubuntu distro. I see yast enables me to reduce my sda1 and create a new partition, (sda3) However it offers to mount sda3 in /usr ? Could you offer me any advice please? My objective is to be able to select which distro from the grub menu.
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Oct 22, 2010
Gnome is falling apart and I've had a lot of nagging problems that I couldn't overcome.I'm thinking of wiping the OpenSuse partitions and doing a clean install without wiping the windows partition.I initially setup using the 11.0/XP dual boot FAQ in the How To forum.I have my Home directory backed up on an external HD. Might try KDE next go-round or KDE & Gnome as separate users. I have 11.2 i586 installation DVD.
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Apr 16, 2011
I have been trying to install openSUSE 11.4 on a Windows 7 laptop, but the suggested partitioning sucks and I lack the skills to do it manually. I would like to format the laptop drive, give up Windows for good and do a fresh install of openSUSE 11.4. openSUSE wants me to keep Windows boot. But I do not want it!
I have tried for an hour now. Can't format, there is no options for that in the openSUSE 11.4 install. There are expert options, but I really do not know how many partitions does openSUSE require. For some strange reason openSUSE wants to keep my Windows partitions. WHY? And if I delete all of the partitions, it wont automatically recreate the needed partitions for openSUSE, it only displays errors and won't let me continue.
For the love of God, do I have to open the laptop, remove the hard drive, put it in another computer and format there?
Why isn't there an option for removing all partitions, formatting the drive and installing openSUSE?
How to disable the forced Win 7 dual boot openSUSE offers and do a fresh install with only openSUSE 11.4 WITHOUT ANY WINDOWS DUAL BOOT BS.
By the way, since my laptops internal DVD is broken and I will not repair it until my daughter is old enough to handle optical drives, I use USB DVD and it won't give me any boot options but starts installation right away. This is also strange.
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Jul 5, 2011
The problem is this: I have a 320gb HDD splitted in 4 partitions. When I first installed Windows XP I formatted the HDD in 3 (Windows system partition, Media partition and another one I left for Linux). However Linux requires another partition for swap. Everything was just fine. One day Windows stopped working and I tried re-installing it. After the system was ready to start, Windows failed to boot with "NTLDR is missing" message. I tried to recover the Master boot record, even replaced NTLDR manually - nothing worked. I read that in order a HDD to be partitioned in more than 3 parts the so called "extended" partitions must be created. I think this may cause the problem but I don't want to wipe out everything (I have more than 100 GB of books most of which are not available anymore in the same locations I have downloaded them)
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Feb 27, 2010
I recently built a new rig and wanted to make it dual boot with W7 & OS 11.2. I installed W7 and partitioned my drive with 30 gigs I anticipated using for the 11.2 install. OpenSuse will not recognize it or allow any changes to that hard drive.
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Feb 25, 2010
I am trying to install dual boot Ubuntu with Win XP SP3. I defragmented the hard disk (Capacity 100 GB) of which windows (it shows continous files) is taking 92.5 GB and then it shows only 251 MB left for Ubuntu. I copied almost the entire data into an external hard disk. But still it shows the hard drive with 92 GB. My question is where is the rest of 7 GB. What do I do to get windows to vacate more from hard disk so that I can proceed with Ubuntu.
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Jan 26, 2011
can i install win xp to dual boot from ubuntu?
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Aug 2, 2011
I dual boot ubuntu with windows xp using grub. I need to install windows 7 now too. How do I go about doing this?
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Dec 15, 2010
I cannot boot into the Windows 7 partition, which I guess is /dev/sda1. I have Slackware installed on /dev/sda2 which boots fine, my /etc/lilo.conf looks like
Code:
/etc/# Start LILO global section compact
[code]....
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