New motherboard, 2 hard drives, dual boot win 7 and Kubuntu 12.04

[lcharles]

I need to replace my motherboard. Right now I have two hard drives the first has win XP on it the second Kubuntu 12.04. The new mother board will probably be a ASRock 99fx extreme4 which, in looking over the manual, only has UEFI bios. (I'm open to suggestions but this looked like an OK board).

So this there a step by step guide to installing Win 7 one the first drive and Kubuntu 12.04 on the second and getting them to boot? Further more I like to test new versions of Linux, which means I also have partitions on the current hard drives where I put them. So how do I get them to boot?

Does Grub2 come into it at all? Is there some other boot loader that will simplify all of this or should just get an older MB, which seems like a cop out. My knowledge of linux is pretty basic I just like it better than Windows but a need windows for a couple of tasks.

[Frank616]

lcharles:

I'm no expert on this, but UEFI often has a 'legacy' setting. This is the way I am running my Intel boarded media PC with Kubuntu 12.04. That machine is not yet a year old. I took the drive from the old machine, and put it in the new one. It booted right away.

If the board you are looking for has legacy mode, and you enable that, then I wouldn't think you'd have to do anything other than swap out the mobo, and reconnect your drives. It should run as it does now with your current board.

As to installing Win7, I know nothing about that. I do know that Win7 does not require UEFI, so will work fine with the UEFI in legacy mode.

Frank.

[SteveRiley]

I would suggest that you ditch GRUB and learn rEFInd. It is as simple and elegant as GRUB is complex and kludgy. And, unlike GRUB, rEFInd's autodetection and automatic configuration actually work!

[lcharles]

Thanks for the suggestions. A board w/o uefi is pretty hard to find. I'll give rEFind a look.

[Frank616]

Steve:

Interesting link. I'll have a look at it with my next machine. As I only run Linux on all my machines, and the two newest ones have a compatibility mode, what I have now works on the machines I have.

I've bookmarked it, however.

Frank.

[lcharles]

OK, I've gone around on this a bit. I don't mean to be a luddite but can I disable the whole UEFI business and boot in legacy/mbr mode by setting something in the bios of newer motherboards? The three boards I'm looking at are ECS Z77H2-A2X, Asus sabertooth 990fx r2.0, and Asus P8Z77-V pro which are listed on a website as all working with Kubuntu 12.04. One of the problems is that I only have a 32 bit version of XP and I have software that I use that will only run on it even though I use Kubuntu most of the time.

[oshunluvr]

AFAIK, all or most of the newer mobo's have a legacy mode for UEFI.

Another possiblity for you might be to use a virtual XP machine instead of dual-booting. Depends on the software you're running in XP as to whether or not that's an option.

[lcharles]

I spent some time at Asus forums and looking at some of the manuals for their motherboards and it does look like in fact they allow a legacy mode.

[Frank616]

I spent some time at Asus forums and looking at some of the manuals for their motherboards and it does look like in fact they allow a legacy mode.

IIUC, the Win8 certification spec requires that it be possible to enable a legacy mode. If you are not going to be running Win8, then using the legacy mode will allow installation of any Linux, and any Windows up to, but not including, Win8. The problem comes when you try to run Win8 and Linux on the same machine. Steve has figured out how to do it, but it is a lot of hoops to jump through. If you don't need it, then just run legacy mode.

I also agree that running Windows in a VM on Linux is a far better idea than trying to dual boot anything.

Frank.

[SteveRiley]

Windows 8 will run without problems on BIOS-only machines and on UEFI machines with BIOS compatibility mode enabled. But Microsoft won't "certify" such configurations.

The only thing preventing easy dual-boot installs is the broken os_prober in GRUB. It still can't reliably find Windows 7 or 8 on GPT disks.

[Frank616]

Windows 8 will run without problems on BIOS-only machines and on UEFI machines with BIOS compatibility mode enabled. But Microsoft won't "certify" such configurations.

Ah. I thought Win8 required a locked UEFI. Glad to have that corrected.

Frank.

[woodsmoke]

Ok then I will ask the question that has not been asked.

Since, I think that I should be considering putting a new mobo in another machine, the present mobo is well into four years old.

The legacy setting thing.

Nobody as mentioned as to whether it is a hardware setting, as in a physical switch on the mobo, or it is a software setting that one has to grab in the fleeting display of whatever alt-f8 keystroke setting it is when the mobo first fires up?

This will be for a Linux only machine of course.

And a secondary question, if there was a mobo that "should" "just work" that is intel, probably, although my present one is an AMD, what do folks like?

woodplanningaheadsmoke

[SteveRiley]

The legacy setting thing.

Nobody as mentioned as to whether it is a hardware setting, as in a physical switch on the mobo, or it is a software setting that one has to grab in the fleeting display of whatever alt-f8 keystroke setting it is when the mobo first fires up?

It's a firmware configuration. Press whatever key combination is necessary to launch your firmware settings after you boot the computer. Look for something like "legacy mode," "BIOS mode," "compatibility service mode/module," or "CSM."

[woodsmoke]

Thank you VERY much SR.
I contacted a local hardware store, I much prefer to support local people, and got basically the same answer.
So now, the choice is WHICH MOBO!! lol
however, that is getting off thread.

woodsmoke

[Frank616]

Woodsmoke:

On my Asus netbook, it has to be set with the UEFI firmware setup utility that you grab with a hotkey as the messages go flying by. With my Intel-boarded media PC, I don't know. That was set up for me when I got it from the supplier that I bought the 'bare bones' machine from who built it to spec for me. I cannot even find out without some hassle, as I do not have a 'standard' monitor connected to it. I use only my HDMI connected flatscreen TV for a monitor, and the HDMI driver does not load until well into the boot process. This means I never see any of those messages that go flying by at all. It 'just worked' when I moved the drive from the old machine to the new one, so I've never bothered to connect an additional monitor to see what was happening.

Frank.