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Upgrading Windows

post #1 of 16
3/27/07 at 8:23pm
Thread Starter 
Well, I'm running Ubuntu Edgy and Windows XP dual boot on my 60 gb hard disk. I just got a copy of Vista (don't worry I didnt' pay for it, I got it through a school thing). How would I go about wiping out the XP partition and then installing Vista? Also, how would I get grub to recognize Vista? I want to do this all without touching my Ubuntu partition.

Here is my partition table from cfdisk:

sda1 Boot Primary NTFS [] 36405.09
sda5 Logical Linux ext3 8381.57
sda6 Logical Linux swap / Solaris 3397.05
sda7 Logical Linux ext3 10322.73

sda1 is my Windows parition (as you can tell from the NTFS). Also, I don't know if the "Boot" is important or not.

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post #2 of 16
3/27/07 at 8:27pm
Thread Starter 
oo yeah, and i want to use it virtually in ubuntu, anyone know if this has been done yet?
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post #3 of 16
3/27/07 at 9:42pm
Well, you can just nuke the XP partition and then install vista there. After that you'd have to put your Ubuntu disk back in the drive and re-write grub onto the MBR, it should recognize vista right away.

To virtualize Vista in Ubuntu you can just install VMWare and set it up easily as a virtual OS.

Also, I dont consider Vista an upgrade. Its a downgrade. I dont consider a loss of OS functionality and speed an upgrade.
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post #4 of 16
3/27/07 at 10:01pm
Thread Starter 
lets leave the anti-windows attitude out of this post. I just want to test it out to see what all the hype is. I'm sure it can't beat beryl in eye candy.

Thanks twilight.
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post #5 of 16
3/27/07 at 10:04pm
Thread Starter 
also how do you re write grub using the live cd?

Is there an option or do i have to use the terminal?
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post #6 of 16
3/27/07 at 11:25pm
That was only meant to be half way serious, I forgot the smilies

Oh, you used the live CD. I'm not sure where the option is there, but in the advanced CD you have the option to rewrite GRUB if you use the install menu.
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post #7 of 16
3/27/07 at 11:51pm
I always use the gentoo minimal live disc to do grub maintenance. If you check out the gentoo handbook there's pretty good instructions on how to chroot into your linux install and run grub to make your changes. I haven't tried to do it in any other distros, but I'm not sure how you could do it without a chroot.

If you want to give it a shot I can try to walk you through. You can skip a ton a steps in the handbook... just skip ahead to the drive mounting and chrooting. So you could start here:
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/handboo...?part=1&chap=4

...And skip all the way down to the last step (4.e. Mounting). You just need to make sure you know what your drive name is.
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post #8 of 16
3/28/07 at 11:12am
option #2 is to use a windows-based bootloader...
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post #9 of 16
3/28/07 at 6:28pm
Thread Starter 
Well, I got Vista installed and fixed GRUB.

The installtion was pretty easy. I just choose my xp partition, clicked "delete" and then clicked next. Everything else was automated. Pretty impressive compared to XP. Got to the desktop and everything was running snappy, faster than XP. After downloading my browser of choice, Opera I started browsing the web. It installed a generic video driver and wireless card driver. I didn't install anything else. Then i just randomly decided to click ctrl alt del to see how much ram was being used. HOLY SH**. 600 mb used with opera open...lol I kid you not.
But I still like it somewhat, I feel like my 1 gig won't be enough. I'm going to keep it and see how it runs. I probably won't be playing any games except CS (I quit all other games which sorta makes me not able to use this laptop to its full potential).

But overall pretty good.


o and i forgot to mention, I still run linux more than windows
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post #10 of 16
3/28/07 at 7:39pm
When I installed Vista it was pretty crappy. My OS literally slowed to a crawl. It took 10 seconds to open a normal explorer window. My CPU usage was idling at about 35-50% and my RAM usage was somewhere in the realm of 800mb. And this was on a fresh install.

For the RAM thing, judging from the computers I've seen with vista and the reviews I've read, it seems Vista uses more RAM when you have more. Comps with 1GB seem to generally use about 500-600MB, comps with 1.5gb to 2gb seem to use about 750-850mb, 4GB computers seem to use over a gig. Thats ridiculous. As for my CPU usage, I turned off aero glass and all the "special" visual features and was running a very streamlined instal and it still idled like that.

I survived a week on that install, then I went back to XP.
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post #11 of 16
3/28/07 at 10:05pm
Thread Starter 
LOL, I got the funniest "error" message on Vista.

I was installing foobar2000 and when it comleted it said:
"Error: Action completed successfully."
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post #12 of 16
3/28/07 at 11:28pm
I've gotten that one
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post #13 of 16
3/30/07 at 4:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by TwilightVampire
For the RAM thing, judging from the computers I've seen with vista and the reviews I've read, it seems Vista uses more RAM when you have more. Comps with 1GB seem to generally use about 500-600MB, comps with 1.5gb to 2gb seem to use about 750-850mb, 4GB computers seem to use over a gig. Thats ridiculous.

Doesn't Linux do the same thing? And XP too, if you have more ram it allocates more to disk cache and generally spreads itself out more.
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post #14 of 16
3/31/07 at 2:45am
Yea, most OS's do that. its just that Vista is much more memory hogging about it. My Linux installs though usually dont use any more than 200mb at idle.
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post #15 of 16
3/31/07 at 2:45am
Linux typically uses as much physical RAM as it can and needs. Meaning if you run lightweight, it will also run lightweight in RAM obviously. Memory management in XP and before tended to use the disk cache more than I would like to be honest. Can't speak for Vista myself, but 600 MB used just by the OS is a bit much for my tastes.

Seablade
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post #16 of 16
3/31/07 at 9:00pm
Thread Starter 
yeah im having some grub trouble, vista's boot loader keeps coming back..

i need some guidance on this one, can't really find anything good on the web.

my partition table is listed in a previous post of mine on this thread.

Edit: I just decided to wipe out ubuntu, i installed Linux Mint (which re wrote grub) so now i dont have anymore problems.

Also, I highly recommend Linux Mint 2.2 Bianca. Great Distro.
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