dual boot question

Ken1943 wrote on 12/9/2015 11:57 AM:
On Wed, 09 Dec 2015 09:34:36 -0700, Ashton Crusher
wrote:

I have a 64 bit win 7 system now. Can I set it up to dual boot to a
second 32 bit Win8 system? I've run into a couple instances of older
programs that were 16 bit and they used to run on my prior 32 bit
system. Now I have to keep a second computer with 32 bit Vista for
those times when I want to run those old programs. Would setting up a
Dual boot WIn7/Win8 (which I would then upgrade to Win10 immediately)
be easy, hard, a nightmare?

Can't run 32 and 64 bit on same computer. One or the other.


Ken1943

I run Windows 10 64 and windows XP 32 bit.
Seems to work fine for me. Dual boot handled by Win 10 fine.

On 12/09/2015 07:41 PM, Ed Mullen wrote:

[snip]

It just can't boot from a GPT disk. If you want to use one for the 64bit
OS, you could install a second HD. If present, secure boot needs to be
disabled.


Who said anything about GPT? The simple original premise is having one
PC able to boot to one or more operating systems. That is easily done
with one physical drive and multiple partitions. Sheesh! Windows
handles that perfectly well.

I did Anyway, computers with a pre-installed 64-bit OS are likely to
have a GPT disk.

Also, I never said that dual-boot with one physical drive is not
possible. I said two physical drives are BETTER.

Have you people objecting to this actually ever done it?

I have and it works just fine.

Single physical disk. Different partitions. Easy.

I did it. Worked fine until I updated some Windows program and it messed
up the bootloader for the other OS.

--
15 days until the winter celebration (Friday December 25, 2015 12:00:00
AM for 1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Of course, we cannot guarantee our Bibles against normal wear or
abuse." [Oxford University Press]

[snip]
I have seen all the problems posted about dual booting so wouldn't
even try it. Besides, the more machines around, the more fun keeping
them all running. Got 5 here.


It (dual boot) might have been working OK with two physical drives, but
I decided I'd rather use a VM.

Ken1943


I have more than that.

Windows 2000 (2), Windows XP, Windows 7 (2), Windows 8.1, Windows 10
(2), Lubuntu (6), Mac Mini

All 64-bit except the one running XP and one of the Lubuntu ones.

That doesn't include the PCs I maintain for friends.

--
15 days until the winter celebration (Friday December 25, 2015 12:00:00
AM for 1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Of course, we cannot guarantee our Bibles against normal wear or
abuse." [Oxford University Press]

On 12/10/2015 06:00 AM, Mr. Man-wai Chang wrote:
On 12/10/2015 6:38 AM, Ashton Crusher wrote:
Would you try DOSBox if not VirtualBox? Windows 10 also comes with
Hyper-V, but you need to add the feature after installing the OS.

Are installed programs within those VMs persistent?


Once installed, it's stored in the disk image of the virtual machine.

And that disk image is a single file on the host system. This makes
complete backups really easy.

I have a program that I depend on, installed in a VM. Earlier this year,
the host machine died but the hard disk was still readable. It was easy
to use that disk image to get the program working on another host. The
only little difficulty was that the new machine had a different local
IP, but that was easy to fix.

--
15 days until the winter celebration (Friday December 25, 2015 12:00:00
AM for 1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"Of course, we cannot guarantee our Bibles against normal wear or
abuse." [Oxford University Press]

On Thu, 10 Dec 2015 13:27:50 -0600, Mark Lloyd wrote:

On 12/09/2015 07:41 PM, Ed Mullen wrote:

[snip]

It just can't boot from a GPT disk. If you want to use one for the 64bit
OS, you could install a second HD. If present, secure boot needs to be
disabled.


Who said anything about GPT? The simple original premise is having one
PC able to boot to one or more operating systems. That is easily done
with one physical drive and multiple partitions. Sheesh! Windows
handles that perfectly well.

I did Anyway, computers with a pre-installed 64-bit OS are likely to
have a GPT disk.

Also, I never said that dual-boot with one physical drive is not
possible. I said two physical drives are BETTER.

Have you people objecting to this actually ever done it?

I have and it works just fine.

Single physical disk. Different partitions. Easy.

I did it. Worked fine until I updated some Windows program and it messed
up the bootloader for the other OS.

It's a very rare "Windows program" that messes with bootloaders.

It would help to know what that program was.

Mark Lloyd wrote on 12/10/2015 2:27 PM:
On 12/09/2015 07:41 PM, Ed Mullen wrote:

[snip]

It just can't boot from a GPT disk. If you want to use one for the 64bit
OS, you could install a second HD. If present, secure boot needs to be
disabled.


Who said anything about GPT? The simple original premise is having one
PC able to boot to one or more operating systems. That is easily done
with one physical drive and multiple partitions. Sheesh! Windows
handles that perfectly well.

I did Anyway, computers with a pre-installed 64-bit OS are likely to
have a GPT disk.

Also, I never said that dual-boot with one physical drive is not
possible. I said two physical drives are BETTER.

Why?

Please document your assertion.

--
Ed Mullen
http://edmullen.net/
The chance that you'll forget something is directly proportional to ...
to ... uh ...

Ed Mullen wrote:
Mark Lloyd wrote on 12/10/2015 2:27 PM:

I said two physical drives are BETTER.

Why?

Please document your assertion.

It allows the drives to be put in trays,
and removed at will.

My test machine has more OSes than slots
in the machine. I can slide in the Win10 tray
and boot. Or slide in the Win8.2 tray and boot.
Or the Win7 SP1 tray and boot.

It just takes less mental energy that way.

And at install time, just the target disk
is present in the machine. And that's so the
installation has no choice but to stay on
the target disk.

I have tried multibooting. I had several Linux
distros on the same hard drive, I interpreted
a statement in the Debian installer incorrectly,
and it *erased* the other distros. And
that's an example of a "risk" associated with
stuffing too many on one drive. Yes, I could
certainly back up before doing that step,
but that would have meant finding yet another
scratch drive to throw into the machine.

Whereas, if I just put the one OS on the disk,
I don't have to think about "consequences" or
do any defensive planning. (With Debian,
my advice is to *always* give it a whole disk :-)
This is not the first time this has happened.)

It's a matter of convenience, rather than being
essential. It helps a lot if you have
lots of slots and lots of scratch drives,
for your work. You can never have enough
scratch drives. (They're addictive.)

If you're on a laptop, I could understand the
multiboot single drive being the most
practical solution. It would help a lot to have
at least one USB3 port, for the backup drive
(the Seagate hard drive I got this year for
backups, can do 200MB/sec near the outer track,
so benefits from USB3 or ESATA). My current
laptop only has USB2, so backups don't
happen very often.

Paul

On 12/10/2015 9:37 PM, Paul wrote:
Ed Mullen wrote:
Mark Lloyd wrote on 12/10/2015 2:27 PM:

I said two physical drives are BETTER.

Why?

Please document your assertion.

It allows the drives to be put in trays,
and removed at will.

My test machine has more OSes than slots
in the machine. I can slide in the Win10 tray
and boot. Or slide in the Win8.2 tray and boot.
Or the Win7 SP1 tray and boot.

It just takes less mental energy that way.

And at install time, just the target disk
is present in the machine. And that's so the
installation has no choice but to stay on
the target disk.

I have tried multibooting. I had several Linux
distros on the same hard drive, I interpreted
a statement in the Debian installer incorrectly,
and it *erased* the other distros. And
that's an example of a "risk" associated with
stuffing too many on one drive. Yes, I could
certainly back up before doing that step,
but that would have meant finding yet another
scratch drive to throw into the machine.

Whereas, if I just put the one OS on the disk,
I don't have to think about "consequences" or
do any defensive planning. (With Debian,
my advice is to *always* give it a whole disk :-)
This is not the first time this has happened.)

It's a matter of convenience, rather than being
essential. It helps a lot if you have
lots of slots and lots of scratch drives,
for your work. You can never have enough
scratch drives. (They're addictive.)

If you're on a laptop, I could understand the
multiboot single drive being the most
practical solution. It would help a lot to have
at least one USB3 port, for the backup drive
(the Seagate hard drive I got this year for
backups, can do 200MB/sec near the outer track,
so benefits from USB3 or ESATA). My current
laptop only has USB2, so backups don't
happen very often.

Paul
What he said, plus.
Dual boot works fine if you leave it alone.
If you're constantly changing it, problems creep in.
Each new OS install wants to be the boss and control
the others. If you delete/modify something that another
install expects, you cause problems. You are limited to
4 primary partitions with windows. I swore off of extended partitions
long ago. I had many issues
with grub. I'm sure it's all fine if you're a grub guru.
I'm not, so I had windows boot problems caused by grub updates.
I have had zero problems since I switched to plugin drives.
Also makes it very easy to clone your drive and test new
software on the clone.

One thing I've yet to experience is how EFI partitions work
with plugin drives. Both my EFI systems got killed by something,
possibly windows 8 installs, trashing the BIOS.

Do you consider ESATA safe?
My external drive has an ESATA port. It is fast, but I worry
about ground loops and glitches taking out the motherboard.

In terms of hardware protection, is an onboard ESATA with an onboard
port any different from a conversion cable that puts an internal
SATA port out to the back panel as ESATA?

I planned to put a SATA plugin drive cage into an externally powered
5.25" CD box and
run the SATA data cable over to the computer.
Never got to test it, but I assume that windows will boot from ESATA.
For me, that's the primary advantage over USB.
My fear of zapping the
hardware exceeded my need for the capability.

Ashton Crusher wrote on 12/09/2015 11:34 AM:
I have a 64 bit win 7 system now. Can I set it up to dual boot to a
second 32 bit Win8 system? I've run into a couple instances of older
programs that were 16 bit and they used to run on my prior 32 bit
system. Now I have to keep a second computer with 32 bit Vista for
those times when I want to run those old programs. Would setting up a
Dual boot WIn7/Win8 (which I would then upgrade to Win10 immediately)
be easy, hard, a nightmare?


Sure, assuming those 16 bit programs will run on Win 8.1 32 bit.

--
...winston
msft mvp windows experience

On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:37:54 -0500, Paul wrote:

It's a matter of convenience, rather than being essential. It
helps a lot if you have lots of slots and lots of scratch drives,
for your work. You can never have enough scratch drives. (They're
addictive.)

OK if you want to try various UNIXy systems - which can boot from a
USB drive, but Windows tends to object to being installed and booted
from a USB. I find that it's important to label these USB drives
informatively too!

On Thu, 10 Dec 2015 23:08:10 -0800, mike wrote:

Do you consider ESATA safe?

I've been using eSATA extensively since 2006, when I first purchased a mobo
with that feature. Since then, I've used it on multiple mobo's and laptops,
with multiple external drives. Absolutely no issues so far.

My external drive has an ESATA port. It is fast, but I worry
about ground loops and glitches taking out the motherboard.

That fear seems to me to be groundless. ;-)

But seriously, if that was an actual issue, you'd hear reports of it coupled
with warnings. I've heard nothing.

On 12/10/2015 04:15 PM, Char Jackson wrote:

[snip]


It's a very rare "Windows program" that messes with bootloaders.

No program should. I think it wasn't trying to mess with a bootloader,
but just writing to track 1, assuming that was OK.

From what I hear, it is usually commercial software with it's "ASSUME
you're a thief" features (often misleadingly called "activation").

It would help to know what that program was.


I'm sure it would, although I don't know. It IS a reason to avoid
dual-boot. Possibly there's no problem with GPT.

--
14 days until the winter celebration (Friday December 25, 2015 12:00:00
AM for 1 day).

Mark Lloyd
http://notstupid.us/

"It is convenient that there be gods, and, as it is convenient, let us
believe there are." [Ovid, "Ars Amatoria"]

mechanic wrote:
On Fri, 11 Dec 2015 00:37:54 -0500, Paul wrote:

It's a matter of convenience, rather than being essential. It
helps a lot if you have lots of slots and lots of scratch drives,
for your work. You can never have enough scratch drives. (They're
addictive.)

OK if you want to try various UNIXy systems - which can boot from a
USB drive, but Windows tends to object to being installed and booted
from a USB. I find that it's important to label these USB drives
informatively too!

My disks are on SATA trays. I use the side-load
spots on a Sonata, then cable them up.

http://img.hexus.net/v2/cases/antec/sonata3/4.3.s.jpg

I have booted Linux Live USB Flash from the back
of the machine, but after ruining two flash sticks,
I don't do that now.

Paul

Char Jackson wrote:
On Thu, 10 Dec 2015 23:08:10 -0800, mike wrote:

Do you consider ESATA safe?

I've been using eSATA extensively since 2006, when I first purchased a mobo
with that feature. Since then, I've used it on multiple mobo's and laptops,
with multiple external drives. Absolutely no issues so far.

My external drive has an ESATA port. It is fast, but I worry
about ground loops and glitches taking out the motherboard.

That fear seems to me to be groundless. ;-)

But seriously, if that was an actual issue, you'd hear reports of it coupled
with warnings. I've heard nothing.


An ESATA enclosure can be bus-powered, or
it can be powered by an external power adapter.

If the AC adapter is two-prong (no safety ground),
you're good to go.

If the adapter did have a safety ground, then there
would be a small chance of ground current flow.
It would take running an extension cord from
some other part of the house, trying to get
enough ground difference to cause an issue.

The ESATA cable will establish the ground connection,
before the data pins touch. Which should remove
most of the possibilities of insertion potential
issues.

If I was shopping for ESATA enclosures, I would
probably select one powered by an external adapter,
so that the cable only needs to use the data pins.

*******

The ones I would be more worried about, is the ESATAp
standard (or lack of standard). This stuff just
makes me nervous, mainly because I can't see
any evidence it is "blessed" by a standards body.
For example, this page may not actually document
all the "flavors" circulating out there. I think
there are some early bus-power designs not shown.

http://www.addonics.com/technologies/euhp.php

One reason for being a tiny bit nervous,
is what happened in the six pin Firewire era
(another interconnect method with bus powering
capability, and high voltages on the bus power
pin). There were some instances of Firewire devices
being ruined, by potentials being applied out
of sequence. A bent housing on the connector
seemed to be a root cause (too much mechanical play).
For safety, I recommend four pin interconnect
methods on Firewire - that's the option without
bus power on the cable.

Paul