Re-partitioning/dual boot with Vista

Lennart Sorensen lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org
Mon Mar 24 15:55:48 UTC 2008


On Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 10:48:14AM -0400, Giles Orr wrote:
> I just purchased my first new computer in four years: I'd been
> contemplating building a Core 2 Quad system from scratch, but after
> pricing it out I went with a Dell system that cost about $250 less
> than I would have paid to build myself.  Still c2q, and sure, they cut
> some corners, but I didn't really want to have to put it together and
> I don't mind.  I actually consider the built-in Intel X3100 video a
> bonus, as it's reported to work very well with Linux without
> proprietary drivers.
> 
> The system comes with Vista Home Premium.  I'm not planning on using
> it much, but I'd like to keep it.  Does anyone have experience with
> resizing a Vista partition and dual booting?  I'm hoping it's
> essentially the same as working with an XP system: you resize the
> partition using a Linux partition editor from Knoppix (or equivalent),
> you reboot, you install (Debian).  No big deal.  Any quirks to doing
> this with Vista?

Not quite.

Vista's new boot loader is paranoid.  Any unexpected changes to the
partition makes it barf.  It is simple to fix using the recovery system
on the install DVD, assuming you have one.  Now in the case of Dell I
believe they actually do include a real install DVD, unlike most OEMs.
Microsoft prefers recovery discs over real install discs, but apparently
Dell told them otherwise.

Preferably you resize the vista partition using the disk manager inside
vista (which works quite well at that job) in which case you have no
issue.  The only issue is that it won't resize smaller than it can
without moving any files.  So if a file is near the end of the partition
then you won't be able to shrink it very much.  I suppose a good defrag
tool would help, but vista only ships with a crappy defrag tool which
doesn't help.

I have resized vista using partition magic and used the recovery program
on a vista RC DVD image I happend to download from microsoft back when
they were doing RC releases, and it fixed the boot loader of the full
vista release just fine.

Installing grub to the MBR works fine and vista has no issues with that.

-- 
Len Sorensen
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