Any Known Problems with Puppy & Vista Coexistence ?

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benali72
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Any Known Problems with Puppy & Vista Coexistence ?

#1 Post by benali72 »

Anyone know of problems with installing Puppy on a Vista machine? A couple people advised me to use the Vista Partition Manager if I mess with (reduce the size of) the Vista partition.

Any other cautions or experiences? Thanks.

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Evil20071
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#2 Post by Evil20071 »

Yes. There's a guide I used for my dual boot after upgrading XP to Vista that, interestingly enough, allows me to use Puppy's GRUB instead of WinGrub. Right from the boot menu as well.

Since Puppy was installed first, I used this guide: http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vista ... talled.htm

If you've got Vista installed first, use this one: http://apcmag.com/how_to_dualboot_vista ... _first.htm

For other setups, use this: http://apcmag.com/the_definitive_dualbo ... bystep.htm

Hope this helps out.
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rcrsn51
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#3 Post by rcrsn51 »

From various reports, the real danger to Vista comes from using a Linux tool like Gparted to shrink the Vista partition. If you follow Evil's links you should note that those tutorials use Vista's own tool in its Disk Management section.

However some users have complained that Vista is stingy about giving up its free space to another OS.

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WhoDo
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Re: Any Known Problems with Puppy & Vista Coexistence ?

#4 Post by WhoDo »

benali72 wrote:Anyone know of problems with installing Puppy on a Vista machine? A couple people advised me to use the Vista Partition Manager if I mess with (reduce the size of) the Vista partition.

Any other cautions or experiences? Thanks.
You're in luck, Howard. I've just installed a bunch of Puppies - all frugal installs so far - to coexist with Vista Home Premium and was about to write a HOWTO on the subject.

The key issues are:

1. Use the Vista Partition Manager to resize (shrink) the Vista partition

2. Use Gparted from Puppy LiveCD to create and format new ext2/ext3 partitions in free space

3. Install Grub to the Superblock of one of those new partitions

4. Use EasyBCD-1.7.2 (free download) to manage the Vista Boot loader and tell it where to find Grub

Voila! I boot my laptop and the Vista bootloader gives me two options - Vista or Linux. When I select Linux I get the Grub boot loader with all my Linux partition options as usual. No problems with coexistence so far.

Previous problems related to using Grub in the MBR. Vista keeps overwriting that apparently. Also rcrsn51 is right about not using Gparted to shrink the Vista partition; causes Vista some issues evidently.

Hope that helps.
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Evil20071
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#5 Post by Evil20071 »

Also, if I may WhoDo? With Easy BCD, rather than use NeoGrub, just tell it that you have Linux and that Grub IS installed to the superblock of the partition. This allows you to use the Puppy Grub instead of the WinGrub or NeoGrub. Especially nice if you've got the graphical GRUB.
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benali72
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Thanks, looks like I'm all set now...

#6 Post by benali72 »

Thanks, everyone... I've convinced two friends running Vista that they need to have Puppy installed and I thought I'd better ask before doing it ... I don't mind messing with my own machines, but in order to keep my friends I figured I'd better ask first and be careful on this one. Now I'm all set... thanks.

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