On Mon, Aug 20, 2012 at 10:31 AM, Conan Doyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> After numerous searches on how to setup CentOS 6.3 and Win7 to dual boot I
> turn to the readers of this forum for help...
>
> I suppose my question is quite simple:
>
> What is the correct way to set up a dual boot system for CentOS 6.3, or SL
> 6.3, and Windows 7?
Use VirtualBox to virtualize the CentOS or SL system on the Windows
box. This works very well, and youŽll still be able to play games or
do CAD on the Windows system at full native speed. SL virtualizes
much, much better than Windows, for a whole slew of reasons.
>
> I have tried several times, with several variations, but run into the same
> problem: After installing Win7, then CentOS, the machine boots straight into
> Win7 and no grub menu appears...
>
> I have a pretty new system that I built in Nov 2012: i5-2500K, Gigabyte
> GA-Z68XP-UD3 mobo, 8GB RAM, eVGA NVIDIA GTX 560 card, and two 1 TB SATA
> drives.
>
> My first attempt was to install Win7 on drive 0 then install CentOS on drive
> 1, with grub installed in the /boot partition which was on /dev/sdb1.
> Apparently there were some issues with this due to Win7, UEFI, etc. I didn't
> really understand all these problems so I tried again.
>
> My second attempt was to try to disable the EFI stuff in BIOS and install
> WinXP, then install Win7 over this to avoid the system restore partition,
> and EFI issues etc. then install CentOS over this, again installing grub to
> /boot, which was /dev/sdb1.
>
> I noticed the default location for grub was /dev/sda, which is the windows
> disk... Would this not hose up the windows install?
There are dozens of Wikis on this. Basically, you can use the grub or
older LILO boot loader to chainload Windows pretty reliably. This has
worked well for at least the last 12 years that I personally know of.
> I have set up Windows/CentOS dual booting before, but not on this machine,
> and not with CentOS 6.3. Any help would be appreciated more than you can
> imagine...
>
> I have been a CentOS user for a while, but I am intrigued by SL, and would
> definitely jump ship to SL if I can get it dual booting with Win7...
>
> Ed
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