Jim Lawrence
accessd at shaw.ca
Thu Jul 11 21:01:52 CDT 2013
Hi Arthur: The quick and dirty way to get a dual boot scenario going is first to install a basic version of the Windows you want and then install you favourite Linux. Linux always recognizes the presents of Windows but the reverse is not true. During the Linux installation you will be prompted as to whether you want to have a dual boot option, and responding in affirmative will cause a dual boot grub menu to be created allowing you to choose, at bootup, which OS you would like use. Jim -----Original Message----- From: dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com [mailto:dba-tech-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Arthur Fuller Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2013 5:23 PM To: Discussion of Hardware and Software issues Subject: [dba-Tech] Hardware Inside Out As an officially self-described semi-retired senior citizen, whose former living was made entiely is MS-related products, mostly Office-VBA and SQL-Server, and who ran Linux in a VM, I want to reverse this stuff. I want Linux Mint to be my native boot, and thereafter run Office etc. as VMs, in case, and it probably will happen, that some client will want fixes or enhancements to apps that I wrote years ago. I'm dealing with aging hardware, a mere 4GB of RAM, and a couple of hard disks and a couple of USB hard disks. I've read the lit and tried it a couple of times, but have never yet succeeded in a dual-boot. It just keeps forking up, and then I waste a few days re-establishing what used to work. I want to boot into Mint 14 and then have a VirtualBox VM set up with Office 2007 just in case some previous client calls, so I could remain the faithful servant and possibly make a couple of dollars here and there. Windows and its attendant licensing agreements are what I wish to escape, forever. A couple of VMs running under Linux should enable me to provide this service. But I'm a tad frightened by the task-list involved in turning this setup inside-out. Goals: 1. Save everything important that is not resident on local hard disks. 2. Wipe the space. 3. Install any virgin of Linux, current choice Mint 14. 4. If everything fails, have Recover Proccess. 5. The most important things are the documents and Access/SQL/MySQL apps that I have written, just in case I have to perform some maintenance on the latter. Everything else is either irrelevant or reinstallable. I can do all that from within a Windows 7 VM running in Oracle VirtualBox, I think. 6. In the past, I have tried to install Linux side-by-side Win7, and every time it failed to work as expected, so I have a tad of trepidation. I suppose that one of the most inexpensive strategies is to score a 1TB USB 3.0 external hard disk, copy everthing that is currently stored on the main drive, fry it and start over. But in case it goes sideways, I'll need all that old data, and we're talking several GB of documents and data I'm concerned with. The documents are relatively trivial to deal with, although there is a large number of documents, and this could require several dual-layer DVDs. The databases are a tad more complex. A few of them are over 30GB each I have a wonderful program called Navicat that can easily port an MS-SQL db to MySQL and then back it up, so I could burn those to DVD. I have another program that can convert an Access database to MySQL So maybe the simplest solution is to go buy a 1TB USB3 external device, copy everything there, and then fry the Win7 install and switch to Mint, then install VirtualBox, and then install or else restore the Win7 backup just in case. Suggestions and novel approaches are invited. TIA -- Arthur Cell: 647.710.1314 Prediction is difficult, especially of the future. -- Niels Bohr _______________________________________________ dba-Tech mailing list dba-Tech at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/dba-tech Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com