[Swlug] Dual boot setup

[Mark Summerfield]

Hi Bill,

On Fri, 20 Mar 2015 19:15:22 +0000
Bill Thomson <billthomson1951 at btinternet.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I want to set up my laptop to dual boot Windows 7 and Linux Mint Mate
> 17. When I try this by loading Windows first, Mint doesn't recognise
> that there's another distro on board and just writes over it. How do I
> go about this?

I have set all my machines to dual boot Windows & Linux. 
The approach I use is:
- install Windows first (if it isn't on the machine already)
- start Windows and defragment its disk
- reboot using a live Linux DVD or USB
- install Linux (which means also partitioning the disk; normally I
  create 3 Linux partitions, swap, /, and /home)
  most modern Linux distros install Grub which will find Windows

After that the machine will offer a choice of OSs at boot time but
default to Linux. (You can change the default to Windows but I never do,
so don't know how, you'd have to look up the Grub docs.)

Best wishes,
-- 
Mark Summerfield, Qtrac Ltd, www.qtrac.eu
    Python and PyQt/PySide - training and consultancy
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