Dual Boot - Advice for a beginner

[shrinivas]

Before you do anything:
I believe that you have installed Win7 after Vista, in the second partition,so as to dual-boot.
First, pop in the vista installation DVD/Recovery DVD and restore vista MBR so that any boot records of Win 7 are deleted.
Then you can safely format Win 7 partition, otherwise you won't be able to boot into Windows.

I have not used Win 7 hence this question.....   the MBR will be overwritten by PCLOS anyway so why does it require to be written by Win 7 just to be overwritten by PCLOS?

To be honest, I don't know ! Since Win7 was installed later, the boot-loader will be of Win 7 and give a choice to boot from either Vista Or Win7. I thought to avoid this. I didn't know how PCLinuxOs would overwrite the MBR, (I thought that it would add the windows bootloader to its own) ! I am still a noob learning. BTW, I don't know how williamb installed PCLOS . Regards.

[Was_Just19]

Before you do anything:
I believe that you have installed Win7 after Vista, in the second partition,so as to dual-boot.
First, pop in the vista installation DVD/Recovery DVD and restore vista MBR so that any boot records of Win 7 are deleted.
Then you can safely format Win 7 partition, otherwise you won't be able to boot into Windows.

I have not used Win 7 hence this question.....   the MBR will be overwritten by PCLOS anyway so why does it require to be written by Win 7 just to be overwritten by PCLOS?

To be honest, I don't know ! Since Win7 was installed later, the boot-loader will be of Win 7 and give a choice to boot from either Vista Or Win7. I thought to avoid this. I didn't know how PCLinuxOs would overwrite the MBR, (I thought that it would add the windows bootloader to its own) ! I am still a noob learning. BTW, I don't know how williamb installed PCLOS . Regards.

The reason I asked is because I have not used Win 7 I was not sure what it may have done to the XP bootloader ......  which might have interfered with it booting without Win 7 being there.

Yes PCLOS puts its own bootmanager in the MBR and allows PCLOS and XP boot.

[shrinivas]

To Johnboy,
Win 7 bootloader is something entirely different !
Once you install win7 along with winxp or Vista, it takes over the booting.
You just can't format win7 partition and get xp to boot, it becomes unbootable. You have to repair the MBR to remove win7 bootloader and recover xp bootloader. (Winxp and win7 bootloaders are different)
I wonder, in case PCLOS overwrites the MBR, what happens to the dual-boot option ?
Won't it still have two options: win7 and win Vista ?

[Was_Just19]

To Johnboy,
Win 7 bootloader is something entirely different !
Once you install win7 along with winxp or Vista, it takes over the booting.
You just can't format win7 partition and get xp to boot, it becomes unbootable. You have to repair the MBR to remove win7 bootloader and recover xp bootloader. (Winxp and win7 bootloaders are different)

That is as I presumed it to be .......  normal; but I have no direct experience of Win 7 so was not certain.

I wonder, in case PCLOS overwrites the MBR, what happens to the dual-boot option ?
Won't it still have two options: win7 and win Vista ?

Not if it is installed in place of Win 7 thus eliminating the Win 7 boot manager files on Win 7, and also installs Grub from PCLOS as the new boot manager.

PCLOS will overwrite the MBR unless told not to.
It will provide a dual boot option in this case .....  PCLOS and Vista.

regards.

[r2r]

Hi all,

In the past, I have dual booted Windows XP and different flavors of Linux with no problems.  I am now running a Windows 7 (64 bit) machine and decided to dual boot with PCLOS 2010; however, I ran into a snag or two. The install seemed to go well, but I didn't get the option to boot into PCLOS.  I figured that I must have missed something, so I started over.  After the new installation, I didn't get the option to boot into Windows.  In the last install, I simply selected the recommendations made by PCLOS.  Is there something I'm doing wrong?  Am I missing a particular setting?

Thanks,
r2r

P.S. In trying PCLOS 2010 on a flash drive and VM, I'm totally impressed with the graphics and speed.  Thanks for putting together such a great OS.

[menotu]

Hi r2r,

Just a quickie - is your Windows 7 on a separate hard drive (i,e, not on a partition on the same drive as PCLinuxOS) ?

[r2r]

They are on the same drive.