I am about to take delivery of a new laptop with preinstalled OEM Win XP Home edition, that comes without a recovery disk but has a recovery/restore partition. I read elsewhere on the net that attempting to dual boot such a system will result in the loss of recovery options due to the boot manager overwriting the MBR. I really want to install Kubuntu Linux on this machine in a dual boot configuration, but do not want to lose the ability to restore Windows should anything happen to it. (I don't use Windows much any more but find it a necessary evil on occasion, besides I'm paying for it whether I like it or not.) Can anyone enlighten me on the install concerns relavent to this situation? I am sure lots of you have faced this situation and dealt with it successfuly but my searches so far have not turned up a solution/explanation for the problem.
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Re: Installing to HD with XP Home and a Restore/Recovery partition
As has been reported to me, it seems to be possible to install Kubuntu with GRUB outside MBR and make use of the M$ boot loader as starting point for both systems instead ... you may conduct a search through the Kubuntu as well as the Ubuntu forums or ask Google for the necessary details.
Prior to any such experiment, however, I strongly recommend to backup the master boot record as well as other details necessary to restore the harddisk if need be ... sorry for remaining vague, but I'm actually writing this from memory (no laptop to check). -
Re: Installing to HD with XP Home and a Restore/Recovery partition
There is a little program called partimage. It will let you make a copy of your MBR.
Or even copy a full image of the windows partition.
You can also use dd to make it, but partimage is easier and menu-driven.
Javier.Comment
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Re: Installing to HD with XP Home and a Restore/Recovery partition
Thanks for the feedback, it is much appreciated. Is partimage a windows or linux program? If a linux program can I use it over my network to backup the mbr of the windows laptop? I would also like to hear from someone who has done a linux install successfully in similar circumstances.Comment
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Re: Installing to HD with XP Home and a Restore/Recovery partition
Linux.Originally posted by handyman
Yes. There are two ways of doing this. You can mount a net share and save the image to it, or setup in some other computer a program called partimaged. It's a daemon (service in windows-speak), it will let you upload images to it, and restore from it.If a linux program can I use it over my network to backup the mbr of the windows laptop?
Anyway, I don't like net copying of images as it much slower than doing it locally. I usually use an external USB hard disk and live CD (I like Knoppix a lot and it has partimage installed).
Javier.Comment
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Re: Installing to HD with XP Home and a Restore/Recovery partition
Thaks for the advice, turns out though that when I actually got the computer it had already been reformatted, wiping out the restore partition and had win XP oem re-installed in the normal manner. Since the restore partition is not now an issue I simply installed Kubuntu Linux as per usual and everything is fine. I am going to acquire a copy of the oem version of XP Home for dell machines in case I ever need to reinstall.Comment
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Re: Installing to HD with XP Home and a Restore/Recovery partition
If I were you, I'd rather spent the money on an external harddisk and "clone-copy" the laptop's Windoze partition to it (as long as the M$ "OS" remains more or less umtampered) - and restore from this image as need be ... that's the way I did it some years and laptops ago, and it always worked ... but maybe someone else could kindly step in and comment and this my suggestion (?).Originally posted by handymanComment
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