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Dual boot after 2007 installation?


pelusa
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Hi,

after a final successful installation of Mandriva and VMware, I figured that i cannot see my PCI card in the virtual machine. This would only a temporary thing as I have to write some software that is only available for windows from the supplier. So in order to start right away I wanted to use Windows until my software does the job. Hm too bad that VMware cannot connect to the PCI card. I now understand that this is because the VM is basically another computer and the PCI card not plugged in there.

OK What about a dual boot? After googleing I see everybody suggests to first install windows and then Mandriva as Windows is too silly to understand there is another OS around. This is not good as i really don't feel like begin from scratch, and what about in a month, when I don't use Windows any more? I do have an external hard disc that I could use for the windows partition. Would this be possible to use, when I change the boot sequence in the BIOS to boot first from this hard drive? How would I start doing this installation?

thanks

Thomas

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Windows is the limiting factor. A windows installation must think it is the primary boot device; otherwise, it will not work. Naturally, this behavior might prevent windows from functioning on any usb device.

 

The best thing is to have a partition available to put windows. If it is the first partition on a single drive, then you are set. Removing data from any partition is of course easy. If you have 2 drives, then switching the boot device in the bios is enough to fool windows.

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Hm, this means I have to uninstall mandriva 2007 again, as I did not leave a spare partition, and neither would it have been the first on the drive. I only have an external USB hard drive, unfortunately not a second drive in the desktop. From your post it seems that there is no way to install Windows now after the Mandriva install with y hardware currently available.

Thanks

Pelusa

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Please list the sizes of the current partitions and also state the total size of your hard drive.

I only had the boot/system partition with 8GB, and then one huge partition with ~450GB .... I know now after reading lots of threads regarding this issue this is not the way to go.

OK I found now gparted and resized/moved my partitions to: boot/system (8GB) is still first (can I move it so that I would have free space for the windows partition at the beginning? -- probably don't have to using supergrub?)

then 40GB (NTFS no yet installed windows) -- 4GB swap -- 250GB (ext3) -- rest ~170GB ext3 ...

this is the current state.

I am planing to install windows and then use supergrub (do you have a nice howto? their site is a bit low with information at least for me and their mailing list is spanish .... unfortunately i cannot read/speek spanish) to get grub/lilo back with the windows boot option as well

Is this the way to go or do you a have better suggestion? This way I just figured out via googling a lot and could have some glitches i do not see right now.

Thanks

Pelusa

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