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How To Make Dual Booting A (Bigger) Pain
the_phenom writes "Thinking of dual-booting your Windoze XP 17" Toshiba P25 laptop? Think again - this one 'uses a DVD with an already setup version of Windows XP Home and then transfers it to the notebook's hard drive,' preventing the normal setup procedure and thus, dual-booting." This reminds me of the unfriendly practice on some PC builders' parts of including an OS "backup" only on a hard-drive partition.
but can't you install linux after windows is already installed? like... use partition magic or something to resize and create a new partition and install linux on that? i havn't done this, but I'm surprised it would really be a problem.
Since when are Windows CDs a requirement for dual booting? I've installed a dual boot solution just fine WITHOUT any Windows CDs. That's on 98se, 2k and XP Pro. Worked like a dream and I simply did NOT need the CD, nor can I think of any situation where I WOULD need the CD. (then again, it's 5 am in the morning, I think I can barely be qualified as sentient atm)
So to put it in a simple way:
What's the fecking problem!?
Hate me!
Since CDs are such a terribly expensive part compared to the cost of a laptop. This seems like a really silly way to cut costs, if you ask me. Sure, most people will never need them, but if they do, it becomes a pain to fix the problem....
If posting the article didn't have a point, it wouldn't have a Microsoft/Borg icon next to it. :)
/.
Note to the editor: Unless you prove otherwise, just because computer dealers do something, doesn't mean MS told them to do it. I know, this goes in the "duh" category, but heh, this is
Why do people think this is some sneaky move, and look at MS. It's simple WinXP pro, for example, is 1.6gig installed, thats almost a gig bigger then a normal disk. So install takes a long time as it resets everything up. Having it on a dvd not compressed and allready set up makes perfect sense. It's for a laptop, very static hardware. For a regular user being able to put a disk in and it copys everything over and your good to go is a great thing. I also bet this was more of toshiba idea then MS's. They arn't building these things with the intent of dual boot, just doesn't make sense to worry about something 0.01% of those who buy one will do. Why not make it nicer for the 99.99 percent that will use it like normal.
Also to other, I don't think any PC maker has included a straight off the shelf version of windows in nearly a decade. No computer I have bought or seen bought by someone had a true real version of windows with it. When you buy a computer from any OEM it comes with a quasi version of windows. This is no differant. Except if the HD crahses of have to re-install you can now do it in a few minutes instead of over an hour.
The new 17" Toshiba comes with a Windows DVD that basically mirror copies itself onto the hard drive (ghosting). Their is no interaction with the user so he can't specify partitions and the like. So he can't dual boot because all the partition is occupied by Windows and can't be changed (to his viewpoint). He can't format the HD and install Linux first because the Windows DVD will simply wipe out the HD and install Windows. Perhaps the author is doing it the only way he knows.
As others pointed out, Partition Magic will allow him to change the partition and allow him to install a second OS. I would think that the author should have asked for some help before writing the article. I've never bought a system with a recovery disk, but then again the last system I bought and did not build was years ago. It's understandable about his frustration if he didn't know any better.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Including CDs with the notebook adds about a week more lead time since they need to be pressed and packaged with the rest of the notebook. This matters when the retail shelf life of a notebook model is about 3 months. Now, multiply by multiple models and variations, and take into account the added supply chain requirements, and it could easily be cheaper to one-off CDs on demand, which could include updated drivers, etc.
-M5B
There's not many apps for Windows that don't have equal, or better Mac versions. For those apps that simply need Windows, there's always VirtualPC. Macs aren't gaming machines, but they're doing alright for me.
/. you probably already have more than one computer, including an x86 you can play games on.
Then again, if you're on
Microsnot, or the computer manufacturer respectively, requires that you install the provided version of WindowsXX. Which means, you can only install WindowsXX as provided from the OEM. In rare cases, the version is just different enough. YOu cannot install a COTS copy of XP if your machine came with a Toshiba OEM copy of XP.
One more reason to say "Fuck Microsoft", and use Linux. Someday, I myself might actually do that, but I'm doing well enough with pirated microsoft software (Just kidding, don't sue my ass).
Actually, as one of those computer geeks that works magic on broken Windows boxen, I can tell you that people still haven't got a clue how to use recovery CDs and bring their computers in with them all the time. For fuck's sake, most of the people my age (I'm only 17, don't hate me because I got lucky with a job) don't know anything outside of how to play The Sims and chat with AIM.
[insert witty comment here]
> Since CDs are such a terribly expensive part compared to the cost of a laptop. This seems like a really silly way to cut costs, if you ask me.
You're not used to dealing with manufacturing hundreds of thousands of something.
In those quantities, pennies count. In this context, a CD that's not needed almost all of the time is indeed an unwanted expense - multiply the cost of that CD by x00,000 and you've cut a big slice out of the overall profit of the product.
Here's some stuff you wouldn't realize until you made the mistake of buying one.
1.) Toshiba's now come with a "BIOS-less" system which means that windows controls all the hardware and you can change NONE of the settings, which makes installing linux a real pain in the ass, but it is still possible.
2.) Toshiba's have a problem of having their own "helping" software that when you boot with a net connection it will call home and download "updates" automatically for you. One such update was for my model to cut the clock speed in half.
3.) Every toshiba I've owned has horrible battery life, you might as well consider them a computer with a built in UPS and easy to move around, and not a "portable laptop".
4.) Toshiba has a little problem with laptops overheating (hence the lawsuit) and certain parts melting.
5.) Toshiba's only selling point is their spec sheets, but as far as being a good purchase you're in for some real problems down the road, I have yet to meet someone who hasn't had some part of their toshiba fall apart and cost less than $100 to fix.
All-in-all these laptops aren't that great, while they pack the latest and greatest they aren't exactly stellar machines. Overheating and hardware failures are certainly nothing new to toshiba's and I would recommend everyone read reviews of ANY laptop model out there.
Remember while it may be cool to have a laptop usually there is something sub-par (make sure you check the waruntee by the manufacturer and highest screen resolution). And ALWAYS remember that if you have the opportunity to grab an extended or three year waruntee for less than $150 then go for it. The battery WILL die, you WILL lose a key on the keyboard, you WILL drop it at least once in 3 years, and something WILL die in it. These are not model specific by any means, these are general laptop things.
Hope this helped ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
Pretty simple, really.
vmware rocks! It also saves you the hassle of having to re-install windows all the time - just make a backup of your drive C file after your first windows install!
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
Microsoft 'saves a lot of money on tech support' every time they sell an OEM license. Because they don't support OEM licenses for free. That's what the OEM is supposed to do.
First of all, -1 Troll.
./ is all about, right? I have said it before and I will say it again, like Linux advocacy, Mac advocacy is an effort at ensuring the tools I want and need are available to me in the future given the overwhelming market forces arrayed against "alternative" platforms like Linux and OS X.
:-) I routinely make backup images of my hard drives to an external hard drive just in case something happens. A simple restore takes care of this issue.
:-)
Oh, please. Seriously?
Second of all, we don't all use Macs because we don't want to.
Fair enough. It's weird though, after trying OS X, I will never again use another OS for my work if I can help it. It is seriously efficient and has replaced in my workspace: 1) IRIX, 2) Win2k and 3) Classic MacOS doing everything in one box what the three OS's did in three boxes.
It's that simple and I wish you Mac zealots would get that through your thick heads at some point and quit bludgeoning us with your evangelism.
The parent post expressed a problem that is easily resolved by using OS X. It was a suggestion and a point for discussion. That is what
you can use Virtual PC on this Toshiba laptop just as well as you can on a Mac (it's a Mac and Windows product, you know),
Very true. But then you are using a Toshiba laptop and not a sweet little Powerbook that provides good run time and performance in an elegantly designed and functional package.
Why should you need to spend extra money just to be able to dual-boot your computer?
I agree with you. Ideally one should not have to spend any extra money to get a dual boot environment. I too was running a triple boot environment as of last year. However, this year I have consolodated all of my software libraries and standardized on a single environment that is more efficient for me and I still get a webserver and workstation running at the same time.
But the story posted here seems to be nothing new. Few PC's I've seen lately come with regular old Windows install disks like you can get in a store. Most of them come with "restore" disks that simply put the drive back in the condition it was when you bought the machine.
There has been a trend toward this for years. Remember when OS's came with paper manuals? These were replaced by (often inferior) online documentation. When Microsoft got so big, it made financial sense to attempt the scenario you describe by not shipping boot disks at all. After all when you have 95% of the market, 50 cents saved per license adds up.
Of course, this is of no help if you somehow type "rd windows" at a DOS prompt by mistake or something and don't need or even want to actually format the drive.
Routine backups are of great importance here.
Still, I confess that I don't quite understand how this actually prevents you from setting up a dual boot.
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How about the fact that this hasn't been the case since around 7.1 or 7.5?
How about that the reason you run into problems without the enablers was because the OS didn't understand how to use new hardware? Enablers actually enabled the OS to work not because Apple decided that they should, but because you actually needed them for hardware to function. Of course, 7.5 fixed all this by moving the Toolbox from ROM to a file on disk, IIRC. (I'm only 90% certain about the facts in this paragraph, I believe the relevant thing to google for would be the Macintosh Toolbox if you really want to know why you'd need this sort of thing and how older Macs worked)
How about that enablers were rolled into the next point release, and installing a newer version of the OS meant you no longer needed the enabler? Oh, and even if you do need one, that enablers are available free from Apple? (Certainly true now, and I suspect that it was true then)
http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Ar
In short, please either learn a bit more background before you make statements like this, or stop trolling.
[Basically you're] just paying for a licence. Which means [you can legally] go to Kazaa and download a Win2k ISO and just use the licence you payed for.
Unless you have to sign a contract in the store, the software is distributed under the terms of copyright. Copyright does not allow you to make copies, and other laws prohibits you from accepting copies you should know have been made illegally. When you install this particular software in the ordinary manner, you have to accept a license, which also prohibits making copies. Nothing permits you to download the software from Kazaa.
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