pelusa Posted December 3, 2007 Report Share Posted December 3, 2007 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted December 3, 2007 Report Share Posted December 3, 2007 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. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelusa Posted December 3, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 3, 2007 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelusa Posted December 4, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 4, 2007 Hi, after searching a bit more it seems like super grub disk is my friend? Could anyone help me in howto proceed or point me to a tutorial to install windows after Mandriva? I could not find any up to now Thanks Thomas Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted December 4, 2007 Report Share Posted December 4, 2007 Please list the sizes of the current partitions and also state the total size of your hard drive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pelusa Posted December 4, 2007 Author Report Share Posted December 4, 2007 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 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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