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Linux - help: dual boot system versus Ubuntu only + WINE ???

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onks
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09 Sep 2012, 5:41 am

betrayedbymyown wrote:
toucan boxer, don't worry, i will partition the drive just right - this is why i'm taking so long to get around to making the switch! my understanding is that, if i F it up, i just start from scratch with the windows cd (which i found, plus a little instruction manual). there are links in my previous post which are hard to find because this forum has silly style (hyperlinks indistinguishable from normal text) but they very thoroughly describe the steps to partitioning the drive for dual boot.

onks, my office is ancient, 2000. the only thing it's good for is if i want access 2000 for nostalgia, which i don't really, i preferred access 97 because at least it worked properly. linux has open office which can read all the word and excell crap anyway.

i have a plan to do the switch this week, but i am moving house/skipping town in two weeks, so that takes priority if i can't manage both at once.


You wont like office versions>2003 anyway because they have this crappy picture menus. I prefer text menus but they seem to disappear in many programs :-(

Access database forms are not readable. and the new formats of office2010, either.

I would partition the harddisk with the windows installer and install linux first later, there is less issues. And use the grub boot loader.
Careful, windows needs the boot sector on the first harddrive. But there are some commands for that in grub, too.(swap harddisks or so)

If you have trouble with that your boot got destroyed use the windows installation cd and boot it into the recovery console, where you can use fixboot/fixmbr
For recovering lost passwords I suggest ntpasswd.

You can also use clonezilla to clone your old windows onto a new hd



betrayedbymyown
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12 Sep 2012, 10:16 am

i've gone and done it now. i used gparted to shrink the windows partition (from ~300GB down to about ~100GB, which is still plenty). i followed the instructions i'd read w.r.t temporarily disabling certain services, rebooting a few times, etc. and finally, i went ahead and installed it. i had a play with the live cd a few months ago, so it shouldn't take too long for me to make myself at home in it. i don't know how to get into windows yet though. the bios screen flashes too quickly for me to see what key to press. i'll try and work it out tomorrow i suppose.



onks
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12 Sep 2012, 11:21 am

betrayedbymyown wrote:
i've gone and done it now. i used gparted to shrink the windows partition (from ~300GB down to about ~100GB, which is still plenty). i followed the instructions i'd read w.r.t temporarily disabling certain services, rebooting a few times, etc. and finally, i went ahead and installed it. i had a play with the live cd a few months ago, so it shouldn't take too long for me to make myself at home in it. i don't know how to get into windows yet though. the bios screen flashes too quickly for me to see what key to press. i'll try and work it out tomorrow i suppose.


If you want your windows to work well in the end you should have a lot free space(>30%) on the harddisk that windows uses.
And then you can use mydefrag to sort your harddisk such that it again accelerates
(mydefrag is not only defragging but puts also the most needed files to the beginning of the HD where it is faster)



dunya
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12 Sep 2012, 11:32 am

I set up a dual boot with windows as the main partition and Linux as the other on this and my previous PC.
I then used a small program to change the boot loader so I could choose windows or linux at the bootup.

There may be issues in future as Microsoft wants to pressure hardware manufacturers to allow only Windows software to run on computers which have Windows 8 pre-installed. It's part of an "improved" security system WIndows have introduced (how long before it is hacked?) to replace the old BIOS setup.

There are supposed to be exceptions to this, (you can buy a "key") but if you do not carefully select your PC/laptop hardware when buying new it could be difficult to get linux to run at all.

I very much want to have the choice which O/S to run on the PC I have paid for. I expect before long there will be workarounds available. In the meantime I will avoid Windows 8.