Does Windows 8 allow multiboot when installing from a mounted ISO?

I just downloaded Windows 8 and am itching to install it. The installation says it will clean everything out. I assume (hope) that it only means I cannot transfer settings from my current OS and that I will be able to multiboot like any other normal OS but I'm not sure.

I'm installing by mounting the ISO since this computer doesn't have any DVD.

Does Windows 8 support multibooting? Specically together with windows 7, without any special "put in this dvd and run this command" stuff.

How to boot to Windows 7 from Windows 8 boot menu without a restart?

I have a dual-boot system with Windows 7 and Windows 8. When I start the machine it takes me to the new Windows 8 boot menu with the blue background. Basically it looks like this:

If I select Windows 7 from that menu, the system will restart (the Acer logo is displayed again), and only then will it continue to boot to Windows 7.

I find this rather annoying (and time consuming too). Is there a way to boot to Windows 7 directly from the boot menu without restarting the computer?

Will my computer slow down if I install multiple operating systems?

Many of my friends have said that installing multiple operating systems on a single PC slows down individual OS's because the total RAM gets divided among the OS's.

Is there any truth in the above statement?

Finding Bluetooth link key in Windows 7, to double pair a device on dualboot computer

How can I dig up the Bluetooth link key for a paired device in Windows 7? Is this something that is dependent on the Bluetooth stack I'm using (Toshiba), or is there a generic place to store these in Windows 7?

Note: I'm not talking about the six-digit code usually typed by the user during pairing - that is worthless since it's discarded after pairing process. What I mean is the 128-bit link key that the devices exchange during pairing, and use thereafter to encrypt all their Bluetooth traffic.

Background:

I dualboot Windows 7 / Ubuntu on my laptop, and I would like to have my phone paired to both OS's. Since the dualbooting computer has only one Bluetooth adapter and thus only one Bluetooth address, I cannot do two pairings to the phone, since on the second pairing (Windows) the phone just replaces the previous pairing (Linux) to the same Bluetooth address.

A thread on Ubuntu forums pointed me to what I have to do - pair first on Linux, then on Windows, and then replace the link key on Linux side with the one Windows negotiated.

I can find the Linux side pairing key from /var/lib/Bluetooth/[BD_ADDR]/linkkeys - no problems there.

However, on Windows side I can't find the key. According to the forum post, on Windows side the key should be in SYSTEM\ControlSet002\services\BTHPORT\Parameters\Keys\[BD_ADDR] but while that registry key does exist, it has no subkeys. (And a similar registry path in ControlSet001 didn't have any subkeys either.)

One thing I've been instructed to do is to capture all events during pairing with Sysinternals Process Monitor. I did this, but I haven't been able to find any useful information from the captured events, not even by exporting the data to a huge XML and grepping that with the BD_ADDRs (with or without colons).

So how could I find the link key for a paired device in Windows 7?

Some reference information: Wikipedia: Bluetooth, Security Now: Bluetooth security

Dual boot a headless machine?

I wondering whether it is possible to set up a headless machine (application server) in a dual boot configuration. The goal is to have linux (debian lenny or sid) and windows (XP pro, no use upgrading to anything newer because my legacy apps won't work) installed on separate partitions, and be able to reboot into the other OS, all through remote means (RDP / SSH). I can probably figure out how to make grub boot into windows by default, and automate the whole thing for convenience, so the 'reboot into windows from linux' part is covered. I'm worrying about the other side of things though - changing the grub configuration from windows.

An alternative would be two separate bootable harddisks and a way of changing BIOS settings from both linux and windows (again, without actually physically being at the machine).

The machine in question is an audio workstation, so virtual machines are not an option (I need every bit of performance).

Multiple OS's and GRUB chainloading

I want to have multiple OS installations and I have been advised that chain loading using GRUB is a good way to handle this. I have looked at tutorials on the web but I still have some questions before I can start.

I want:

• Windows XP: 20 GB. For running some school stuff and a game which does not work through WINE.
• Xubuntu 9.04: 85 GB. My main OS.
• Another Linux distribution: 15 GB . For experimenting and trying Linux distributions out.

I will:

• Wipe and install various distributions quite often on the 15
• Use dd to make a copy of my Windows partition after installing it and getting things to work as I like. My experience is that Windows needs to be re-installed maybe once per year to not get bloated and slow.

I have been told:

• To use GRUB chain loading. It will make it easier when kernel upgrades are made in the Linux distributions, as they modify the GRUB boot-menu.

To my understanding I need to: (I might very well be mistaken)

1. Install Windows first.
2. Then install Xubuntu and let it write over the MBR with GRUB (I guess this is the default).
3. Get the GRUB on the MBR start Windows XP if I want to (it's done by default), start Xubuntu using the kernel of my choice or defer execution to the boot sector of my other Linux distribution. The actual chain loading will only occur when I want to start my experimental install of Linux.

I wonder:

• Is step 3 above correct and a good way to handle this?
• Is it also a good way to use chain-loading for both Xubuntu and my experimental Linux installation?
• How do I get a Linux distribution to install the boot loader it comes with to the boot sector of its partition and not to the MBR?
• If I can't get it to not touch the MBR. Then I could make a backup of the MBR using dd and then write it back after installing my experimental Linux installation. But then, how would I get the boot loader (lets say GRUB) into the boot sector of the experimental Linux installation? How would it work if said Linux installation gets a new kernel update and needs to update the GRUB menu?

How do I move the Windows 7 Boot Files (bootmgr, ...) to a different drive?

I wanted a dual-boot setup. So first I installed Windows 7 on the 1st partition of one hard drive (we'll call it HDD1), and then I went to install Ubuntu 9.10 on the second partition of HDD1. Unfortunately, this didn't work (it bypassed GRUB2 and went straight into Windows). I decided to reinstall Ubuntu, and that's when I noticed that (for some reason) Windows decided to place its boot files on another hard drive (we'll call it HDD3).

I'd like to fix this - I want to move the boot files from HDD3 to HDD1. It may help fix my dual-boot issue, but even if it doesn't, in my experience, it'll save a lot of headaches down the road. How can I do this? I'm going to assume its not as easy as just copying the files, but I'd like to be proven wrong :)

What do I have to take care of when hibernating both Ubuntu and Windows (dual-boot environment)

I've got both Windows 7 and Ubuntu (finally) installed on my laptop.

For the sake of comfort, I usually hibernate Windows instead of shutting it down. And I think when using Ubuntu regularly, there will be times when I do that to quickly switch from Windows to Ubuntu to check or do something quickly and then want to continue my work on Windows.

1) Are there any problems with hibernating both Windows and Ubuntu at the same time?

I should probably also mention that I created an extra partition which I use to access from both Windows and Ubuntu. I would like to put my www directory of my test web servers on that drive, so that I can work on that stuff both from Windows and from Ubuntu.

2) So - is this a good idea and what do I have to be careful with?

EDIT: One important sidenote I forgot: I want to share a Mozilla Thunderbird profile directory on a shared drive. Does that change anything?

Preinstalled Windows 8 and Linux UEFI dual boot on a laptop

I am trying to set up Windows 8 and Arch Linux on a new Sony Vaio E14 with preinstalled windows 8.

So far:

• installed W8 to my new SSD (switched for the original HDD) using Recovery Media
• shrunk the W8 partition, deleted recovery partition, disabled swap
• confirmed W8 booting just fine

On to Arch:

• disabled Secure Boot in bios
• confirmed W8 booting just fine
• Booted Arch off the CD and installed everything to 4th and 5th partition
• set up rEFInd for EFIstub kernel bootloader

After that it got worse. I was unable to boot anything else than Windows 8 (although I was glad that they at least kept working just fine).

Tried:

• creating EFI\refind\ and putting the .efi there (as per Arch manual
• overwriting EFI\boot\bootx64.efi
• overwriting EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgr.efi
• overwriting EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi --- YAY rEFInd shown up!

So far, so good. I've kept the whole W8 Boot\ directory in EFI\windows8 and set up a boot menuentry for it; and it booted just fine.

But, upon restart, everything was wrong -- 'Operating system not found' instead of any bootloader (refind or w8).

Booted back into Arch using the live CD to find out that the EFI partition had erroneous FAT table. fsck.vfat fixed it, and I've found that EFI\Microsoft\Boot was back to it's original state (all refind files deleted and replaced with W8 bootloaders). I've overwritten them again and got back to rEFInd showing up correctly and Arch being perfectly bootable.

After that I've tried only renaming EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi to bootmgfw.001.efi (then copying refind's .efi to bootmgfw.efi and keeping EVERY OTHER file as it was), but with exactly the same result. Tried marking the GPT EFI partition as read-only, same result.

Now I'm kinda out of luck. Arch boots fine, so does W8 but it destroys the EFI partition in the process.

Thanks for any ideas, Googling brought me this far and I can't find any better.

PS -- windows 8 MAYBE destroys the partition upon shutdown -- when I order a shutdown in W8, it takes unusually long (about half a minute instead of ~5 seconds). So in theory I could solve this by hard-resetting the laptop instead of a normal shutdown, but that's just not nice.

Multiple Windows installers on a USB stick

I've recently got my hands on one of those SanDisk Extreme 64GB sticks and started tinkering with it. During this story, please keep in mind that this is a model where removable bit is set to 0 (which means Windows sees all its partitons by default - each is shown as a single disk in explorer).

Goals:

1. To have many different bootable distributions on a single stick
2. Among those should be Windows 7 installer AND Windows 8 installer
3. Only one partition should be auto-mounted in Windows (and preferably other OSs) -the first one (storage for files). This is to prevent accidental alteration of bootable partitions or files on them. It should be of type NTFS.
4. Optionally, I would also like a directly bootable fully persistent linux (preferably Ubuntu) on this stick.
5. All of these features should be available from a single menu shown at the time of booting the machine from the USB stick.

Ramblings:

Now this can all be achieved pretty easily by using a combination of SYSLINUX and GRUB (you'll see below). However, there is one problem: all Linux-based bootable items (those that use create ramdisk -> load kernel -> have fun scheme: like PartEd Magic, Ubuntu Installer, etc) seem to have no problem whatsoever to run from their own folder on a single bootable partition. They get along fine when simply putting them in different folders and pointing single SYSLINUX menu entries at them (whatever it is they use after that, might just be another SYSLINUX :)).

The problem (as always :D) is in Windows installers. They (or should I say, bootmgr) refuse to recognize relative paths. If you put one Windows installer in a folder, say, Win7 so that it looks like /Win7/bootmgr, the darned thingie looks for \Boot\BCD when passed control (not \Win7\Boot\BCD - the location it is actually stored in). Having learned that, naturally, you can't put more than one Windows installer on a single partition (a single directory structure). This violates GOAL 2.

Current Scheme:

Need 10 reputation to post images :(. Here is the scheme visualized.

Description:

1. Normal NTFS partition. Do whatever you want with it - it won't affect those sensitive boot links :)
2. FAT32 boot partition. This is where control is transferred from MBR. This one has to be primary to be able to be transferred control from MBR. It contains main SYSLINUX - the one that shows menu (GOAL 5 and GOAL 1). All partition below are extended to lift max-4-primary-partitions per disk
3. Windows 7 installer. This partition contains bootsector which points to GRUB on it which points to /bootmgr (don't ask why so many bootloaders - it's a test setup :)). Works fine except the concern below (GOAL 2).
4. Windows 8 installer. This partition contains bootsector which points to GRUB on it which points to /bootmgr. Works fine except the concern below (GOAL 2).
5. Persistent Linux partition to which Ubuntu was installed using normal methods (from the same USB stick). It uses GRUB to manage its boot menu. Also has boot sector of course (GOAL 4).
6. Linux Swap. Used by Linux on previous partition usually but is not bound by any restrictions on who can use it.

Now it all seems right (and it does work).. except GOAL 3.

Problems:

1. I have tried using hidden flag to hide those partitions from Windows' sight and it worked well, even too well. It also hid them from Windows' installer's sight. When I tried to install Windows from a hidden partition, the installer basically did not find where did it boot from :O. This is CRITICAL issue.
2. I have used 2 additional partitions to house Windows installers. This is not really a great scheme as every time I wish to change something and it does not fit on these, I have to re-partition. This is NON-CRITICAL issue - I can live with that.

My thoughts:

1. There are things out there like ISOLINUX and GRUB4DOS (they come up when you search regarding this). From what I understood they can help me actually mount Windows installer's bootable .iso. Is that true? Some pages contain a warning about images mounted like this will only be accessible at BIOS boot stage - when Windows installer starts it will not be able to see the mounted image. Is that true? Can you point me in the right direction?
2. Maybe I could use some custom installer for Windows (because essentially, I fight bootmgr here 100% of the time) or chroot the bootmgr somehow so that it becomes sane? Can this be performed? I think this still leaves me with a problem that the partition is still hidden and installer probably won't see it
3. Maybe I could hack the path into bootmgr, although that is a pretty bold assumption :)

If there is any additional advice regarding this, you are very welcome to discuss it here. I am open to any suggestions. If there is something that needs to be clarified or additional info has to be provided - feel free to ask.

Thank you very much!

Windows 10 Installation - A media driver your computer needs is missing

The most weird thing is happening to me: I have a hp notebook which has no internal DVD drive, so I installed via an external USB LG Blueray burner.

1. First I installed Windows 10 customer preview into one partition.
2. Then I installed Windows 8 into another partition.

All works fine. I have dual boot computer where I can test my software on Windows 8 and 10.

The computer has the following partitions:

1. Recovery partition (300 MB)
2. EFI System partition (100 MB)
3. Data partition (400 GB)
4. Windows 8 (40 GB)
5. Window 10 preview (40 GB)

I repeat: All works fine. Neither the installation of Windows 8 nor 10 preview produced any problem.

Now comes the most weird thing that I have seen: As the final Windows 10 is out now, I wanted to replace the Windows 10 preview with the final Windows 10.

I boot the installation DVD, after a while comes the screen where I can select the language. Then comes a screen with a button in the center that says "Install Now" and then comes a message "Setup is starting".

Up to here all fine. But then comes a strange error:

A media driver your computer needs is missing. This could be a DVD,USB or hard disk driver. If you have CD, DVD or USB flash drive on it, please insert it now.

Note: If the installation media for Windows is in the DVD drive or on a USB drive, you can safely remove it for this step.

First: this error is not understandable. Second: It does not make any sense. When setup was already running up to here this means that it CAN read the DVD. So what driver should be missing?

Some people reported similar problems with Windows 7 where the cause was that it did not boot from a USB 3.0 port. But this cannot be the culprit because

1. Windows 10 does not have this limitation anymore.
2. I tried all the 3 existing USB ports and all result in the same error.
3. I installed the Windows 10 preview with the same Blueray burner on the same notebook. Why does the preview find the driver and the final not?

I came to the conclusion that this is -once more- a wrong error message. The cause must be elsewhere.

Then I made a very interesting test:

I booted from the same Windows 10 preview DVD that I installed a month ago. And voilá: It also does not boot anymore. But it gives another error:

On a black screen it tells me

CDBOOT: Couldn't find BOOTMGR

Missing OS

No bootable device -- insert boot disk and press any key.

How is it possible that the SAME DVD, that I installed successfully one month ago, now throws an error ?

Then I made a third test: I booted from the same Windows 8 DVD that I installed before. And this is the only DVD of the 3 DVDs where I get up to the menu which allows me to select the parition into which I want to install.

Summary:

1. Win 10 final DVD fails with one error
2. Win 10 preview DVD fails with another error, although it worked before!
3. Win 8 DVD runs correctly

It is clear that this is

1. Not a hardware problem: same notebook, same blueray burner, both Windows still run perfectly.
2. No driver is missing because both Windows were installed without problems before.
3. The DVDs are not burned wrongly, they worked before.

For me the only explanation is that the installation of Windows 8, which I installed after Windows 10 preview, destroyed anything on that computer.

Nevertheless both OS still run without problem, it is only the installation which is blocked.

But what has happened? Are there any diagnose tools? Has anybody seen such a strange thing before? Does anybody know a workaround (except deleting all partitions and starting from zero)?

How to configure dual boot NixOS with Mac OS X on an (U)EFI MacBook?

I could not find any description of configuring dual boot of NixOS and Mac OS X on an (U)EFI MacBook. I am willing to experiment, but i would like to know at least that what i will try is supposed to work, and that there will be a chance to not have to reinstall OS X afterwards.

Can anybody tell me please the main steps or give a link to a page that describes the procedure?

What confuses me in particular is that the UEFI installation section of the NixOS manual says that i need to make an EFI System Partition that will be mounted at /boot; however, my disk already has an EFI System Partition as the first partition, and i am afraid there can be conflicts if i allow both Mac OS and NixOS to modify it. According to Wikipedia,

On Apple–Intel architecture Macintosh computers, the EFI partition is initially blank and not used for booting. However, the EFI partition is used as a staging area for firmware updates; specifically, it places a firmware flash utility (EFI binary) and data file (FD – "Firmware Device") in the directory EFI/APPLE/FIRMWARE which is then run when rebooting the system in "flash firmware" mode. If deleted, the system will still boot, and the boot manager will still allow users to choose whether to start a Boot Camp partition or the default Mac OS X, but firmware updates will fail.

I imagine this means that if i use the same EFI System Partition for NixOS, it may get modified if i make an Apple firmware update. It is also not clear what will happen if i create two EFI System Partitions. For example, there is a NixOS configuration option boot.loader.efi.efiSysMountPoint (where the EFI System Partition is mounted) with the default value "/boot", but how will it know which one to mount?

P.S. As a boot manager i was planning to use rEFInd, but any alternative suggestion is welcome.

How do I create a dual/multiboot of Windows and GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, etc?

Because of reoccuring questions about dualboot of GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows, an authoritative general guide is needed as a reference for users asking about dualboot/multiboot.

Necessary elements:

1. Cover both BIOS and UEFI boot methods, using GRUB2 as the Bootloader of choice because it is commonly used in popular GNU/Linux distributions.

2. Set up the partitioning, with examples for both MBR and GPT partition tables. Include primary/logical partition problems with MBR and shrinking Windows partitions if no space is available elsewhere. This should preferably be explained for GPartEd, as that is the most commonly used GUI partitioning tool. Include information about the special partition that may be necessary with GPT.

3. Explain setting mount points manually. At a minimum set swap and root (/), but preferably with directions for /home and /boot as well. Add mount points for existing NTFS/FAT/other data partitions. Optionally use the Ubuntu installer as an example so users can adapt to others.

4. Repair/Install the bootloader when not done automatically by the installer or when damaged. Include the steps potentially needed for secure boot.

The guide shouldn't walk throug all edge cases but be helpful for most users. Part 4 for example should be as easy as showing the usage of grub-mkconfig (and additional work for secure-boot).

Is it better to dual-boot or run a VM?

I want to run Windows Vista 64bit (Eventually Windows 7) and Ubuntu on the same machine.

I want to play games and do graphic design in Windows. I want to write code, surf the internet, check email, and do everything else primarily on Linux.

Windows obviously can't be hosted in a VM since I want to do intense graphics stuff, but I was wondering if it would make more sense to go ahead and run a VM with Linux on it, which would require me to boot into Windows and and start the Linux VM every time. Or, If I should just dual boot, and boot into Linux about 80% of the time, and just restart when I need to use Windows.

I don't have much experience in this area and I'm leaning more towards dual-booting at the moment. Can you guys shed some light on the subject? Is it better to dual-boot or just run a Linux VM?

How do you install Linux alongside Windows 8 without corrupting the Windows 8 boot configuration?

In order to install Linux Mint 14 alongside Windows 8 I disabled UEFI and booted to a flash drive with the Linux image. I installed Linux, restarted the computer, and the GRUB boot loader appeared. When I selected Windows 8 I got the following error:

Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:

1. Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer
2. Choose your language settings, and then click "Next"
3. Click "Repair your computer."

If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.

   File: \Boot\BCD
   Status: 0xc000000e
   Info: The Boot Configuration Data for your PC is missing or contains errors.

I did not have a disc, so I didn't bother trying to repair the installation, especially if doing so was going to ruin the GRUB boot loader and give me problems with my Linux installation. I re-enabled UEFI to see if it would allow Windows to load properly. It did, but it did not give me the option to boot to Linux. How can I resolve this issue and allow the two operating systems to co-exist?

UPDATE:

I've tried EasyBCD without any success. I can add a Linux boot option, and it shows up in the menu, but it consistently says that a boot configuration file is missing or corrupt when I try to boot to it. I've also installed rEFInd on Windows, but I could not find documentation as far as add the Linux boot option to the menu, or install an Ext4fs driver (honestly, I'm not even sure what these programs do. I have no real knowledge of OS booting. When I dual boot I always install Linux last and let GRUB do all the hard work. Unfortunately my GRUB won't work with Windows 8). I don't think I haven't tried looking through documentation, I just think my lack of experience with dealing with bootloaders has hindered my ability to understand what documentation I've found.

I'm looking for more suggestions or where I can find information in order to better understand the problem or how to fix it.

UPDATE:

I recreated the bootable USB flash drive through UNetbootin and reinstalled Linux Mint in EFI mode. However, when I tried to select linuxmint from the Windows boot manager it wouldn't load, citing there was something wrong with \EFI\linuxmint\grubx64.efi. The vital step I had missed was that I needed to disable secure boot in my BIOS settings. Once I disabled the secure boot, rEFInd loaded correctly as it was supposed to, and I was able to load GRUB without a problem. I spent hours trying different things; tweaking the boot menu with EasyBCD; reinstalling Mint over and over again; it turned out all I needed to do was disable secure boot and either install rEFInd or install Linux in EFI mode.