Difficulty in trying dual boot

[ICIT2LOL]

I saw in another thread about Zorin being a good Linux based system to dual boot my old Toshiba with the Windows 7 Pro already on it.

Now I have tried a bootable disk and USB stick (made with Rufus) and set the boot order to the USB but the old girl is just refusing to boot the Zorin so I can set it up.

Any ideas on what I may be doing wrong as I have watched some YouTubes to see how it is done but it is just not happening. Would it be my older machine is incapable of booting Zorin??

Any help greatly appreciated.
John

 

[Megahertz07]

John, did the Zorin disk CD / DVD booted normally?
Rufus can be tricky as it has some options (legacy, uefi).

As I understood you want to have Zorin on the USB stick.
If you put the Zorin installation disk on the USB it will always function as an "try on"

This is what I would do:
Remove your HDD from the Laptop so the Zorin installation doesn't install Grub (Linux boot loader) on it.
Boot from the Zorin CD / DVD installation disk.
Install Zorin on the USB stick so you can add programs to it and work as a normal OS.
On BIOS config first boot to USB and second to HDD.
Then boot from Zorin installed on the USB stick

Brian likes Zorin. I like Lubuntu. Almost same thing.

 

[DavidE]

John,
Can you test your bootable DVD/flash drive on another PC(s) to see if it works ?

I've also read using Rufus can be tricky.
Here's an article showing how to create Zorin bootable media using Etcher rather than Rufus:
Install Zorin OS - Zorin OS

 

[jpolacko]

I just recently went away from MS Windows to Opensuse Leap 42.2 but for awhile I dual booted between the two OS's but anyway's I've had some issues with Rufus and putting Linux ISOs on usb drives. But it should ask you to download a file before putting the Linux ISO on the USB Drive. I maybe wrong also. Just from recent experience

 

[ICIT2LOL]

John, did the Zorin disk CD / DVD booted normally?
Rufus can be tricky as it has some options (legacy, uefi)

Yes Mega mate I think the problem is a BIOS one I even went to the length of downloading it on the legacy machine but no go.

Now I have tried those other things but it still doesn't want to boot from either source and I did try deleting the EFI folder on the stick thinking maybe getting rid of it would do the trick but no go again.

I tried the UUI method same result too.

Can you test your bootable DVD/flash drive on another PC(s) to see if it works ?

I'll give that a go David and see what happens I just don't want to scramble one of the other machines up for the sake of trying Zorin.

I will try the Etcher too but if necessary I try the Lubuntu and last resort Ubuntu which I know I can do this with.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Update I have now got Zorin and Lubuntu to boot - but not on the machine I was trying it on.

I have an old tester that boots both perfectly and quickly. Now this old machine is a legacy BIOS and is old enough to still have DDR2 on it but the two OS's run like lightning I prefer the Zorin slightly over the Lubuntu but now am wondering why I am getting a message about something to do with DOS when I tried Partition Wizard and CCleaner??

Now the initial boot would be faster if I could work out why the old laptop will not take it as it is a fair bit younger than the tester.

But thanks to you all and David the Etcher worked a treat and so much faster than either of the others

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Another update I split my C: drive in half and have have installed - or at least I think I have - Zorin in the allocated partition.

However on boot up I get no option as to what OS I want and it boots straight to Windows. In the Partition Wizard thee appears to be mess of tangled of partitions and I have done something wrong somewhere but I did follow a tutorial and watched a couple of YouTubes not that they were much help because they go so fast.

In my pic you will see what I mean

 

[Megahertz07]

You probably have installed Linux boot loader (Grub) on another disk.
On a Legacy BIOS, on boot, BIOS points to disk MBR that takes to the Master boot loader. This Master boot loader can take the boot sequence to Windows or Linux. The master Boot Loader can be from Windows or from Linux.
As you are booting windows, install Easy BCD and add an option to have also Grub as a boot option.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

You probably have installed Linux boot loader (Grub) on another disk.
On a Legacy BIOS, on boot, BIOS points to disk MBR that takes to the Master boot loader. This Master boot loader can take the boot sequence to Windows or Linux. The master Boot Loader can be from Windows or from Linux.
As you are booting windows, install Easy BCD and add an option to have also Grub as a boot option.

Ok Mega I will try that I just couldn't get my head round that partition mess as the drive looked originally as I outlined in black.

Now the laptop still refuses to boot into anything but the C: SSD even though I can get the USB stick seen in the BIOS (not always though) plus I have even tried a DVD too.

I have updated every driver as they were all new - no change and there is not an option for a BIOS update and Toshiba on a Google for it give me a version of the BIOS that I already have on the machine.
So I might give that one a miss - a shame really because my old tester was really good for trying out stuff I wasn't familiar with.

Still I will play around with the tester desktop and if I have to slip in a spare SSD and install Zorin only - directly to it and try and recover the other drive back to what it was. I know it means swapping the drives around when I want to use Zorin but I suppose Zorin might not be something I want to keep going with eh?

 

[Megahertz07]

John, I've been playing with Linux for more than a decade and I have had some issues on setting a dual boot.
I have a UEFI dual boot on my 128G SSD and it works fine and I use both OSs.

But, as I did on post 2, I recommend to install on a USB flash drive (32G is perfect). With it on a USB flash drive, you don't mess your HDD drive and have a complete OS, with many tools, that you can boot on any computer.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Yes mate I think it is just the Toshiba as I got it (Zorin) to dual boot on my tester desktop the Toshy just will not boot from anything but the hard drive no matter how much I change the boot order - probably past it's use by date.