Linux in a VM is too slow... I work at home a lot, writing high end vis 
sims for real time stuff... In fact, if I could afford Redhawk RT linux, 
I would buy it, but alas, I cant... Also, I don't care about gaming, 
etc...  I only want to retain windows to sync my ipad/iphone/ipod... 
Shameful I know, but thats the truth...


On 2012-08-20 16:17, Nico Kadel-Garcia wrote:
> 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 you´ll 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