OS's

[cast-fish]

sorry to bother anybody ......it's an off topic thing

but

is it generally understood that in the main, win32 or win64 always should (or indeed actually needs) to be installed to a primary partition?

google throws up lots of convoluted 'computing opinions" type answers.....instead of people actually answering just the body of the point

thx

V

[andyj]

Windows pretends like they are the only ones that exist and they don't play well with others. My work machine is multiboot, so I have learned from experience that you need to install Windows first into a primary partiion, then Linux later. Linux can see Windows partitions, Windows is blind to anything not MS. I run can run Windows natively or in a VM from Linux using a physical partition. It works, but there have been some recent Windows patches that make this a booting HELL. You will get familiar with the windows bootrec.exe command in the recovery console.

[cast-fish]

andj

thanks for your reply and i seem to concur with what you say.....it seems Msoft just have their own rules that nobody else really likes to agree with.

Having said all that.....in all my years i have never actually been aware  that win32/64 really needs to go into a primary partition. It was never something i
readily realized or saw mentioned anyplace.

I actually think the reasoning behind it is far more involved and concerns licenses and boot strappers and the MS empire over global hardware.

That said ........google can throw up all types of peoples opinions.

We are not allowed to blog on this TCL forum (i know) but  my final question is close to what you also mentioned Andj .

Question:

Once my machine  has an empty primary partition
and i install win32 into that partition, i expect that win32's bootloader will then obscure the
existing boot manager that was acting in my second Linux partition
 (partition 2 "tinyCORE" Linux--)(logical partition)-- syslinux boot manager.

.......is it therefor true, that Linux will then become invisible on this machine?..... and not be able to be readily booted ?

Thanks

V

[andyj]

Yes, which is why you must install windows first, then Linux. Otherwise you will need to boot from some other media and fix the boot loader. It may be technically possible to get the MS boot loader to recognize another OS using some third party BCD editor, but I don't have any experience with that.

[cast-fish]

andj

thought so....

thanks for your fast reply

V

[nitram]

Question:
Once my machine  has an empty primary partition
and i install win32 into that partition, i expect that win32's bootloader will then obscure the
existing boot manager that was acting in my second Linux partition
 (partition 2 "tinyCORE" Linux--)(logical partition)-- syslinux boot manager.

My experience is the same, best to install a Microsoft OS first. However, if your system has the luxury of a second physical drive, uses a good old fashioned BIOS and you have access to the hardware then the solution is simple and it does not matter which OS gets installed first/last/re-installed.

For example, install Linux distros onto SDA, temporarily disconnect drive and install Windows OS onto 'SDB'. Reconnect both drives and set the BIOS to boot from SDA, where the Linux bootloader resides. With a bootloader like Grub2, running an update-grub will then auto find the Windows OS and add it to the boot list.

With this technique subsequent Microsoft re-installs won't wipe out bootloader. Probably other methods, although this one is bullet proof and doesn't require re-installing Linux distributions and bootloaders just because of a Microsoft issue.

[cast-fish]

yes

that is a good idea.....since the optical BAY here is empty after unhooking the CD drive
and a small optical Cady to house a hard drive is like 3 bucks new online....the cady slots into the optical laptop slot and the HDD slots into the cady. The HDD Appears as a second drive in your laptop (laptop sized HDD which i have spare ones of here)

[Misalf]

I don't know the reason for the affinity of primary partitions of MS OSes.

DOS even needs to be booted from the first primary partition. However, you can set the "hidden" flag via most boot loaders and the OS works fine again. This is also needed if multi-booting different versions of Windows, say XP + 7.

I would even go that far to suspect that Microsoft doesn't care about the possibility of alternate OSes to be installed on one system and thereby even ignores it's own products. Maybe to simplify code - Maybe to push sellings.

Also, at least grub4dos can be loaded via the Windows boot loaders (only tested up to Win7).
Either go with it or don't use it I'd say. I'm going with it unfortunately.