More Operating System Fun
I've been playing around a lot with software installations this week. After running out to buy Vista and experiencing the morning-after buyers remorse (or is it grieving for dearly departed money?) I look forward to a New User Experience (trademark pending.) I didn't go into this project blind - I did my homework. Several people, when writing about their experiences with the beta releases of Vista, recommending a dual-installation with XP. Paul Therott, whom I look up to as a mentor, recommends Symantec's Partition Magic to manage partitions and boot sequence. Yes, Vista has its own boot manager, but if Paul doesn't use it, who am I to argue? Symantec. I've had trouble with their stuff lately, but if Guru Paul says so, I'll try it. What's another seventy dollars?
For the un-geek, Partition Magic has two parts, the namesake program divides hard drive space into smaller, theoretically more manageable spaces. There as several benefits to this, but the one I'm interested in is to separate operating systems into their own niches. Then comes the need to inform the computer which system to run at startup. That's the job of Boot Magic, which loads before Windows does to ask us just that.
Don't you love the names? I could insert a whole litany here. It's enough to note that the first time I tried to prepare my hard drive in accordance with instructions in Partition Commander's skimpy booklet, Symantec's magical technology hung during the process. I waited an hour for a simple repartitioning command to complete. It should've take three minutes, max! End result: goodbye Windows XP and all its accoutrements. Now that's Magic! (They thoughtfully provide a manual in PDF format which installs with the program. When your computer fails to reboot, however, access to the manual is lost. Perhaps they thought everyone would waste paper by printing out the 90+ page document.)
I'm faced with a dilemma. Do I embrace adventure, install Vista alone and hope all my legacy programs work? Or do I still take Paul's advice and dual-boot? (Actually, my ultimate intention is to triple-boot with Ubuntu Linux as a third operating system.) I decided to stay the course and begin to rebuild my XP install. I'm still miffed about wasting money on Symantec - again - and give into the urge to try them - again. Several hours later, I have a working XP install with all the latest drivers, Partition magic installed, a new partition created for Vista, a working install of Vista, and Boot Magic managing the whole thing. I'm up past bedtime testing the configuration.
In the morning, the computer won't boot: something about a corrupted MBR (Master Boot Record, the first part of the hard drive where all the formatting information is kept.). Luckily, I made the recovery disks for both Partition Magic and Boot Magic. A quick adjustment from the recovery disk, and XP started right up. Vista, however, wouldn't. It seems that the fix provided by Boot Magic's recovery disk was incompatible with the way Partition Magic reads the MBR, resulting in corruption. Need I remind you that these programs are sold together on the same CD? Need I reiterate how I hate Symantec? Sorry, Paul. Your uncontested sagacity didn't work for me. Seventy dollars, POOF!
Rebuild, rebuild, rebuild. Using Vista's native boot manager flawlessly, I ponder the wisdom of attempting to add Linux to the mix. Ubuntu uses it's own boot manager, which may cause conflict. I'll have do to some research.
Oh, but I LOVE computers, this is so much fun! Costly, sure, but still fun. It's sort of like paying for concert tickets and seeing a mediocre performance - you know, that dry taste in your mind as you tally the dollars-per-hour you just experienced?
February 5th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
In the interest of being techy as well as being sneaky, I have installed Linux on a few of my work computers over the years. I’ve had it co-exist with Windows NT 4, Windows 2000, and Windows XP, each time making sure that the MBR is never touched and that Windows does the whole boot manager thing.
I like the boot managers that are available with Linux well enough, but when you’re messing with the Man’s Machine, you have to make it easy to cover your tracks.
If you install Ubuntu according to its defaults, it will overwrite the Windows MBR and place its own boot manager in place. The same thing happens if you install Windows onto a computer running Linux. The whole process is actually pretty painless if you’re not writing and rewriting the partition table too much (moving and resizing partitions while trying to preserve data). Of course, as I mentioned above, it is possible to install Linux alongside Windows without touching the existing Windows MBR (I’m not sure how easy it is to go the other way, however. Windows gives you a lot less options when it comes to installing the boot sector).
My checklist when installing multiple OSs follows
1. get a Linux Live CD (one of those boot-off-of-CD distributions), Ubuntu’s is here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
2. use GParted (included on the Live CD) to partition your drive for the various operating systems. I would have 1 system partition for XP, 1 for Vista, and 1 for Ubuntu, with an extra swap partition for Ubuntu and a “shared drive” for all 3 (that’s 5 paritions total).
(if you want to, you can substitute steps 1 and 2 with Partition Magic. I think you can run that off the CD without having an OS installed, but I’m not sure)
3. Make sure your “shared drive” partition is formated as FAT32 because Ubuntu does not have native support for NTFS. You can format your Windows system partitions as NTFS if you want for added stability and security, and Ubuntu should be Ext3 (or if you have another preference use that).
4,5,6: Depending on which Boot Loader you want to use, XP’s, Vista’s, or Ubuntu’s will determine the order of install. The last one you install will be the Boot Loader you end up with. I don’t know how good Vista’s Boot Loader is, and I’m not certain how well Ubuntu’s jives with Vista, but I would suggest XP, then Vista, then Ubuntu. Mainly because I have the feeling it will be easiest to manage a catastrophic failure from GRUB (or whatever Boot Loader Ubuntu installs). Each system install should automatically detect the existence of the previous system install and add it to the boot loader.
If you want any more info, feel free to email or call.
February 5th, 2007 at 3:26 pm
I’m not sure if it was clear that the checklist above is not the same as my steps for installing Linux on a Windows machine without touching the MBR. I assumed your situation doesn’t require that kind of annoying tip-toeing around.
February 8th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
I design computers for a living. My next computer is going to be a Macbook.
‘Nuff said.
-BT