Dual boot Zorin 5 OS with Win7 - Zorin preinstalled

[madvinegar]

Hi all.

My story is the following.
I have installed Zorin 5 Os to my laptop and this is the only OS in the laptop now. I believe that Zorin OS is based in ubuntu.

I want to install as dual boot windows7 and I would like from someone to write a quick and easy guide as to how to do it. (I found a lot of guides for dual booting but all of them were based on win7 being preinstalled). I want a guide when a latest version of Linux is preinstalled. i.e what to do with gparted, how to configure the boot menu etc.

Also, is it possible to create a partition with gparted with a complete different letter? (i.e. one partition to be named C and the second to be named D).

Your kind assistance will be very much appreciated.
Thank you.

 

[Mark Phelps]

The process is actually quite simple -- with the complicated bit at the end...

You need to boot from some kind of Linux LiveCD, or from a GParted LiveCD to do the partitioning -- because you can't modify a partition that is mounted and you can run using a partition unless it is mounted. Don't know what the Zorin media has, but the Ubuntu desktop CDs are bootable, and when you boot from them, choose Try Ubuntu. Once in there use the Disk Utility to shrink the partitions to leave some room.

Do NOT use that utility to create a new partition. While running GParted under Windows will probably let you create an NTFS partition and assign it a drive letter, it would probably be better to have the formatting done as a side-effect of the Win7 installation.

Since Win7 will overwrite the MBR as a side-effect of its installation, when it is done, you will no longer have access to Zorin. If Zorin used GRUB, you will then need to reinstall GRUB to regain access. You would need to check on the Zorin forums (if they exist) or on the Ubuntu forums for how to reinstall GRUB. For Ubuntu, you need a desktop CD because you reinstall GRUB using it.

However, once you reinstall GRUB, if you install it to the Drive, not to a partition, you will NOW no longer have access to Win7. In Ubuntu, you would then open a terminal and enter "sudo update-grub" -- to regenerate the GRUB menu so it includes Win7. I have no idea how you would do this in Zorin.