Solved Dual boot original Vista with Windows 7?

[johnwillyums]

Hi Shawn.
No I can't extend the partition.
I get through the first few stages, click install, click custom then I get to a page with disk 0 and disk 1 on it.
Disk 0 is my old HDD and has 2 partitions so it appears as 3 long boxes. Basically it has all my media stuff on it plus two now empty partitions ( 20Gb and 5GB) where Ubuntu used to be
Disk 1 Partition 1 (my newer disk) has 465GB total with 303GB free space. This has my system on it.
Under that are a series of choices: refresh, delete, format, new, load driver and extend.
Extend is greyed out and won't work. I can refresh, delete, format or load driver.
I tried the larger of the 2 old partitions on disk 0 and it says I can't install there cos they are not NTFS
Similarly I can't extend the large partition on disk 0.
I'm getting nowhere here.
Thanks for your help, John

 

[SIW2]

Hi John ,

sorry you're having trouble with it - never come across any problems like that before.

Provided you have an uncorrupted GParted, here's the direct d/l for a tiny free isoburner - works great , just runs straight away - I use to burn iso to cd all the time

http://www.ntfs.com/downloads/Iso-burner.zip

This is the version of Gparted I have used - direct d/l

http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gparted/gparted-0.4.1.tar.bz2?modtime=1227957187&big_mirror=0

Could you post a jpeg screenshot of the Disk Management window ?

To post a jpeg. , click Go Advanced at the bottom of this thread page and follow step 8 onward in this tutorial

http://www.vistax64.com/tutorials/148532-how-use-snipping-tool-vista.html

Hope it helps

SIW2

 

[johnwillyums]

Thanks for your reply SIW2.
I was just in disk management and I deleted the 2 partitions on disk 0 that used to contain Ubuntu so it now looks like this:

Could I install 7 on this space? Would I still get a dual boot? Do I need to format or something.
At least I've found some space but I can't understand why disk 1 won't shrink.
Thanks again, John

 

[SIW2]

Looks allright to me, you would be better not trying to boot across drives.

Did you run off the cd that Easeus offers - and try booting in from that and using it to shrink your C drive. That should work. Might take half an hour if it needs to move system files.



SIW2

 

[johnwillyums]

I actually purchased Easeus Partition Manager Professional on line (see previous post) when I try to boot from it and then shrink my disk 1 c: drive I get:

"Failed to complete the batch operation.
Message (4101):failed to quarantine system partition"

So that seems to be thirty pounds wasted.
Are you saying that putting 7 on disk 0 would not work?
Thanks very much for your support, John

 

[SIW2]

Because of the way BCD operates, you can get issues booting across drives - some people get away with it - disabling hibernation seems to help.

Safer to install it on the same hd as your System partition.

Try clicking the tools tab in Easeus as per my previous photo.

Click Create Bootable disk - put a cd in the drive - do not format it , if Autoplay pops up, just close it. Easeus will burn it for you ( it already has the .iso inside the program ).

Boot in from that cd and you will see the familiar Easues screen - get it to shrink the C drive.

 

[johnwillyums]

Ok. thanks, I'll try that and report back, J

 

[johnwillyums]

SIW2! Fantastic (I think) Did as you suggested and it's taken all this time to give me this: As you can see I now have 26 Gb of unallocated space on my c: drive. After Easeus had done it's stuff ( I take back all those bad thoughts I had about them) it wouldn't boot so I put in my Vista disk and clicked on repair. this also took ages and I've rebooted twice and that is taking three times as long as it was. However I've now been trying to do this for nearly 10 hours so many thanks for your help. I'm assuming I can now go ahead and install the 7 Beta on the unallocatad space. Can't really believe I'm almost there, thanks, John

 

[SIW2]

Hi John,

Yes go ahead and install 7 on that new 29gb space.

Easeus is fine - you didn't waste your money.

It's better to use the bootable disc for making changes to your System partition, and it should be fine to use it from within Windows for the other partitions.

You may find that Disk Management is able to operate on that C drive now.

Keep us posted about the installation.


SIW2

 

[johnwillyums]

Well I finally did it and thanks to you SISW2 and the others on this forum. Everything seems a bit sluggish but both systems are booting. Just one fly in the ointment- I can't get on line. For some reason my router (BT Voyager 240) and Windows 7 don't play together. The ADSL light on the router goes out and Windows 7 tells me it can't find a connection. If I boot back into Vista I'm back on about 5mbps. How weird is that? I've been at this for hours and have to go to sleep. Tell you what though. It's been exciting. Thanks a lot for the help. I'll think about the router problem tomorrow (but it is a bit of a biggie) Best wishes, John

 

[SIW2]

You might try installing the Network drivers from Vista on 7. Probably need to run the setup in Compatibility mode.

If you don't have a copy of the drivers,use dd to extract a copy for you while booted into Vista.

BooZet Freeware | Double Driver - backup and restore installed drivers

You will get a folder containing something like this




Then boot into 7


In Device Manager, rt click Network Adapter select update driver ,



Click browse my computer...>Let me Pick..>Have disc >Browse to the folder with your copy of the Vista drivers.




Hope it helps

SIW2

 

[johnwillyums]

Hi SIW2. I've been all trying day and still can't get online in windows 7.

I tried various ways of making a driver folder with the software you recommended,some of them worked but the important ones didn't, they're not exe. files and when I've transferred them to Vista with a USB stick they don't install.
I got a zip file of the driver of the router from the makers site. Still nothing, transferred that and it just opened.

In Windows 7 it's like my router doesn't exist.

I rang my ISP support line. Guy didn't sound like he'd heard of 64 bit let alone Windows 7. They " don't support Windows 7, it's not out yet"

Amazingly a guy in an Indian BT call centre spent an hour trying to connect me, he even did a remote on my screen and got his mate in, who was himself dual booting, to help. Still nothing.

So, I can dual boot but at the moment I can't really use the system. It's an absolute bummer. thanks again, John

 

[SIW2]

hello John,

Try this - in Vista run Double Driver - then tick your Network adapter driver ( untick everything else ), then click Backup




The folder will look a bit like this



Inside the Network Adapter folder will be something like this - including the .inf .



Copy that Folder ( not just the .inf ) to Seven.

SIW2

 

[SIW2]

When in Seven, go to Device Manager rt click your Network Adapter , Select Update driver,

Then Browse :



Then Let me pick



Then Have Disc



Then Browse to .inf inside the folder



Like this and click Open



Then OK



Hope it helps

SIW2

 

[sandeep]

It's better if you install by running the installation in vista. Then select the hard drive you want Windows 7 Installed on. Doing it through booting the CD just creates extra confusion with drive letters and booting.

 

[johnwillyums]

Hello again SIW2,
I tried as you suggest but as you can see network adapter does not appear in 7s Device Manager:

However in IE I get a no connection box and a find a connection wizard and these:

These seem to be saying I've succeeded somewhere but I still can't see my router.
Thanks for your continuing support, John

ps. as you can see these haven't come out in the right order

 

[SIW2]

Hi John,

Right click on the Other devices icon and see what is listed there.

Also post a screenshot of the files inside the Network Adapter driver folder you downloaded.

What is the make and model of the Network Adapter?

Hopefully we'll get you connected soon.

SIW2

 

[johnwillyums]

Hi SIW2, Here's some snips of the device manager in Windows7 with the 4 other devices expanded:







The nova stick is a DVB-T digital tv dongle.
I'll do another post with the contents of the router software I tried.
Cheers, John

 

[johnwillyums]

Hello again. here's the pics of a zip file on Windows 7 with what I hoped was the router/adapter software.
The router is connected to my pc via an ethernet cable with an rj45 plug on each end.
My router is a "BT Voyager 240 ADSL Router". I've been told they are made by DLink but I could not find them on DLink's site so I googled various terms including "Atheros" which is what the adapter driver shows as in Vistas device manager. I got this off a Driver download site but I looked at so many I can't remember which one. Hope this helps, it's driving me crazy.
If I open the zip file on 7s desktop I see a file called "ar8121_10028".
If I open that I get 2 files. Here they are opened,. Hopefully in the right order. The second file contains 32 and 64 bit files so here they are both opened.

 

[SIW2]

Hi,


Th ethernet controller - the first screenshot, is not being recognised properly.

It's a long shot, but try updating the driver for that, you could see if Windows can find the update, or if you are able to browse from there to your drivers you copied from Vista - as per the screenshots in my earlier post.

SIW2