Author Topic: Dual boot with Win 7, two HDD's  (Read 1686 times)

Offline RPsx94

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 84
Dual boot with Win 7, two HDD's
« on: January 03, 2010, 04:05:49 AM »
I tried searching for some answers to my question but I guess I don't know the right key words to search for.  :-\  I read the sticky above "Installing pclinuxos & windows on seperate sata hdd/lilo whos.(Solved)" but I'm rather lost on most of what is being said in the thread.  :-[

As the subject says, I would like to dual boot PClinux with Windows 7 and I need to know if a dummy like me can do it without nuking my PCLinux installation.

My computer is setup like so.

PCLinux - On a SATA drive by itself.
Win 7- On a IDE drive by itself. This HDD is the only thing hooked up to my lone IDE connector.

I believe my BIOS is set to boot from the SATA drive upon startup.

Is this GAG program the way to go?  Is it easy and pretty straight-forward to use?

Is LILO what I need to use?

Or is this something as easy as editing my menu.lst to "see Windows"?  Any guidance is helpful.

Offline Old-Polack

  • Administrator
  • Super Villain
  • *****
  • Posts: 11591
  • ----IOFLU----
Re: Dual boot with Win 7, two HDD's
« Reply #1 on: January 03, 2010, 04:14:10 AM »
I tried searching for some answers to my question but I guess I don't know the right key words to search for.  :-\  I read the sticky above "Installing pclinuxos & windows on seperate sata hdd/lilo whos.(Solved)" but I'm rather lost on most of what is being said in the thread.  :-[

As the subject says, I would like to dual boot PClinux with Windows 7 and I need to know if a dummy like me can do it without nuking my PCLinux installation.

My computer is setup like so.

PCLinux - On a SATA drive by itself.
Win 7- On a IDE drive by itself. This HDD is the only thing hooked up to my lone IDE connector.

I believe my BIOS is set to boot from the SATA drive upon startup.

Is this GAG program the way to go?  Is it easy and pretty straight-forward to use?

Is LILO what I need to use?

Or is this something as easy as editing my menu.lst to "see Windows"?  Any guidance is helpful.

If you are already booting to PCLinuxOS using grub, and Windows is already installed to the first partition of the other hard drive, all you need is a Windows stanza as such;

title Windows
    rootnoverify (hd1,0)
    map (hd1) (hd0)
    map (hd0) (hd1)
    makeactive
    chainloader +1


If Windows is on the second partition, as is becoming common;

title Windows
    rootnoverify (hd1,1)
    map (hd1) (hd0)
    map (hd0) (hd1)
    makeactive
    chainloader +1

Old-Polack

Of what use be there for joy, if not for the sharing thereof?



Lest we forget...

Offline menotu

  • PCLinuxOS Tester
  • Super Villain
  • *******
  • Posts: 15310
  • ┌∩┐(◕_◕)┌∩┐
Re: Dual boot with Win 7, two HDD's
« Reply #2 on: January 03, 2010, 04:34:43 AM »
I'm not sure whether I'm reading the OP correctly, if I am this MAY help
 
I have Win 7 installed on one partition and PCLinuxOS 2009.2 KDE 3.5xx on another (but on the same hard drive) and I always install PCLinuxOS after any windows installation.

PCLinuxOS does all its magic during the installation and boots up first with an option to choose windows if required.

If I need to modify the boot process I simply go into the PCLinuxOS PCC (Control Centre) select the Boot option > Set Up Boot System and hey presto the options are there for which drive/partition to be selected and which to set as the default. You can also alter the 30 second boot time from here as well....
PCLinuxOS 32bit KDE 4.10.1; kernel-3.4.11-pclos1.bfs & 64bit 3.2.18bfs; NVidia GeForce 8400GS 1GB 310.19 driver

Sony Vaio SVE1513A4ESI Laptop, Intel Core i5, 2.6GHz, 6GB RAM, 750GB, 15.6" Intel HD Graphics 4000

Offline RPsx94

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 84
Re: Dual boot with Win 7, two HDD's
« Reply #3 on: January 03, 2010, 01:18:33 PM »
Wow, you guys make it sound easy.  Here I thought it was going to be a serious undertaking.

I'll give this a try later on today.

Offline RPsx94

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 84
Re: Dual boot with Win 7, two HDD's
« Reply #4 on: January 08, 2010, 05:06:25 PM »
I did this the other day, and it took all of 5 minutes to get this to work. It really was as easy as you guys said it would be.

Run the Control Center "Boot" setup and a double checked to make sure everything was right in my menu.lst.  Shutdown, booted to Windows, restarted and booted into PCLinux.

I'm just mad that I didn't take this easy jump sooner!

Offline Old-Polack

  • Administrator
  • Super Villain
  • *****
  • Posts: 11591
  • ----IOFLU----
Re: Dual boot with Win 7, two HDD's
« Reply #5 on: January 08, 2010, 05:17:12 PM »
I did this the other day, and it took all of 5 minutes to get this to work. It really was as easy as you guys said it would be.

Run the Control Center "Boot" setup and a double checked to make sure everything was right in my menu.lst.  Shutdown, booted to Windows, restarted and booted into PCLinux.

I'm just mad that I didn't take this easy jump sooner!

You can't make the jump until you know it's possible. Had you asked sooner...  ;D
Old-Polack

Of what use be there for joy, if not for the sharing thereof?



Lest we forget...

Offline RPsx94

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 84
Re: Dual boot with Win 7, two HDD's
« Reply #6 on: January 09, 2010, 03:53:37 AM »
I was scared.  :'(

Offline Old-Polack

  • Administrator
  • Super Villain
  • *****
  • Posts: 11591
  • ----IOFLU----
Re: Dual boot with Win 7, two HDD's
« Reply #7 on: January 09, 2010, 08:49:04 AM »
I was scared.  :'(

Don't be. Short of a complete wipe out, Linux is very hard to kill. Almost anything you do to it can be repaired, if need be, so relax and experiment. That's part of the fun. You break it, with or without help, you fix it, and you learn something valuable in the process. Help, if needed, is always available here.  ;)
Old-Polack

Of what use be there for joy, if not for the sharing thereof?



Lest we forget...

Offline menotu

  • PCLinuxOS Tester
  • Super Villain
  • *******
  • Posts: 15310
  • ┌∩┐(◕_◕)┌∩┐
Re: Dual boot with Win 7, two HDD's
« Reply #8 on: January 10, 2010, 03:35:38 AM »
Yup - don't be reluctant to ask a question as I've found the the forum will nearly always come up with a solution and sometimes there may even be more than one way of solving the issue which teaches us different ways of doing things in PCLos

Also, quite often the question may of already been asked so its always worth doing a search of the forum which I see you did.

Good PCLos'sing to you.....
PCLinuxOS 32bit KDE 4.10.1; kernel-3.4.11-pclos1.bfs & 64bit 3.2.18bfs; NVidia GeForce 8400GS 1GB 310.19 driver

Sony Vaio SVE1513A4ESI Laptop, Intel Core i5, 2.6GHz, 6GB RAM, 750GB, 15.6" Intel HD Graphics 4000