Yet another dual boot question......

Turbojoe · 26 Oct 2009

I know you guys are tired of seeing these questions but this one should be easy. Right now I'm running XP and Ubuntu 9.04 dual boot on my primary drive. I have already saved all files that I need to a USB drive. I have Win7 Home Premium upgrade and will also be doing a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 when it is released on the 29th. It's a long story why I'm doing both but I want to start off with two fresh operating systems on my desktop box. I still have my laptop with Vista if it all blows up in my face.

My question is this....I'm ready to do Win7 today. Should I worry about the Ubuntu install (probably next weekend) causing any problems with Win7? Because they each have their own partitions I can't see why there should be an issue but ya never know. Is there any reason why I should do one before the other or just not worry about it?

Joe

wallyinnc · 26 Oct 2009

Joe, I am no Ubuntu expert, but if I compare your situation with someone doing a dual boot from XP, it might be similar. The problem you might encounter is not with the different partitions, but with the boot loaders, I don't know how GRUB will interact with Windows bootloader.

I anyway suggest you read through the dual boot tutorial for XP, it might give you some hints.

These tutorials might help too:
MBR - Restore Windows 7 Master Boot Record
BCDEDIT - How to Use

And Welcome to the forums!

ken9122 · 26 Oct 2009

Welcome to 7 Forums!!
Joe, not sure about your system, please fill in you system specs. But in general you should have no problems.
Once you give us the system info we can offer a more definitive answer.

Ken

ilesal · 26 Oct 2009

Windows 7 should be installed first, followed by Ubuntu Koala. After which you will get a boot screen with both the Win7 and Linux distro as chooses. You can change the order of which they appear by using the msconfig in Win7. I would install 7 now and then Ubuntu, both will be separated and if any problems with either they should not effect each other.

I have Win7 and hackintosh running on my Samsung R710, I plan on triple boot with Ubuntu on the 29th as well.

rsvr85 · 26 Oct 2009

Yep, you should install Windows first. I installed Karmic through Wubi with W7 installed first. It keeps the Windows boot manager as boss so there's less headaches.

Turbojoe · 26 Oct 2009

Wow. Thanks for all the fast replies guys! Win7 will get installed later today then. Even if it all falls apart only time will be lost because as I said everything I need has been saved on the USB drive. I'd just prefer to have to do two installs only once if possible.

I updated my system specs. After you finish laughing at how outdated everything is understand that I'm out of work right now so no upgrades will be made for a while. I pre-ordered Win7 for the $49.95 deal back in July. That's the only reason I have it. Gotta make do with what I have for now...

Joe

wallyinnc · 26 Oct 2009

Thanks Joe for the feedback and the spec update. It doesn't look bad, probably with a little more memory you can have a pretty good system, mainly with Win7.

Let us know how it goes tonight and if any problem we are here to help. Is it below 100F there already? :)

Turbojoe · 26 Oct 2009

wallyinnc said:

Is it below 100F there already? :)

It's beautiful here right now. This is the time of year that makes it worth living through the blazing Arizona summers. Expected high of only 85 today. Gotta love it!

Hopefully I'll report Win7 success later tonight. Have to go out for a while but will start when I get back. Thanks again guys.

Joe

rsvr85 · 26 Oct 2009

Turbojoe said:

wallyinnc said:

Is it below 100F there already? :)

It's beautiful here right now. This is the time of year that makes it worth living through the blazing Arizona summers. Expected high of only 85 today. Gotta love it!

Hopefully I'll report Win7 success later tonight. Have to go out for a while but will start when I get back. Thanks again guys.

Joe

Good luck Joe!

Dave76 · 26 Oct 2009

Just thought I'd mention a couple of issues we've seen with AMD ABIT mother boards.

These may not be applicable to yours, just for reference.

Turn off AMD's "Cool n' Quiet" if you have it.

Do you have HyperTransport function settings in your BIOS?
There are two options in the BIOS Setup called K8 -- KN HT Speed and K8 -- KN HT Width, both are normally set as Auto. Change them to K8 -- KN HT Speed to 1x and K8 <-> KN HT Width to 8 8. You can change them back after the install.

If you have any problems with installing, try taking out all memory cards except one, if that doesn't work then move the memory card to a different slot and try again.

Any Over Clocking of the RAM, CPU or GPU?

I hope it all goes well for you, sometimes it's better to know some of the previous issues before you start.

Hope you tell me all this typing was for nothing :)