Dual Booting Windows 7 and AV 5.0.3 'HELP'

[Elvis]

I have windows 7 installed NOW on my new system for my wife, and I would like to install my AV5 for me. Can anyone Please Help us. I have tried for 4 full days with no luck (Hours after Hours of Reading, installing and re-installing). I have tried installing AV5 first, but that don't work? and on my system when I install AV5, I have to type, without the quotations "pci=acpi  acpi=off". Other than that AV5 works great. The system has Windows 7 on it now and the drive looks like this,

Boot?         sda1  ntfs   100.00
Win7 is on   sda2  ntfs   488.28
Linux swap  sda3          107.42
AV5.0.3      sda4  ext4  335.71

The Motherboard - Asus p8z68 deluxe gen3 with intel i7, 16gb ram, wd sata 6gb 1tb drive, 12xblueray writer and the graphic card - EVGA gtx560ti.
I am new to all this so if you don't mind I would need a step by step how to. Sorry,  Please can Someone Help Us Elvis

[GMaq]

Hi,

So you are saying AV will boot for you but you have to enter those 2 cheatcodes into the bootloader for it to boot properly? Or is that on a different system?

[Elvis]

First of all Thank You for getting back to me.
Yes, it's on the same system. I can reformat the drive and install av5 with the codes and it works fine, I'm not sure, but somrthing on this new motherboard that av, ubuntu and kubuntu did not like, maybe the PCI bus?, so I found a work around off the internet. I can reformat and install win7 with no problems and all the drivers. But I can't seem to get a dual boot with win7 and my av5, so right now I went back to win7 witch is loaded now, becase the wife needed a computer, so if I need to run my av5, I'm back to reformatting and in installing av5. I would like to have both worlds. I use av5 for my studio and a Alesis HD24 recorder for my band. I have tried playing aound with partitioning, but when I run av5 it writes over win7 or win7 writes over av5.
sorry for being winded.
Elvis

[soppel]

Just my two cents and way I do it.

First put windows at the computer, without any partitions. It is a more difficult to get windows on a pc were linux is already.  Windows has its habits that it want be in front, the first
When windows is ready, i use Gparted from a separate CD.  ( maybe it works from the live cd with AVlinux, I did not tried)
With Gparted I make the partitions . So you shrink Windows space. ( don't tell your wife, we won't tell her )
Let's say you shrink windows to the half of the capacity.

Than I make an extended partition of the other half.
next step: make a swap
and two partitions for AV linux.
I try always to have minimum of 2 reserve partitions. Those 2 can you use when there is a new AVlinux. You can install and make it yours before you switch over. In the meantime you can work on the old one.

( note: swap is sda5, and the others sda6, sda7 etc)

Than you start AVlinux from the DVD, and install it: choose 6 for /    and 7 for /home
Than reboot....... and it should work!


You can find Gparted here: http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php
note: you need the .ISO   not the .ZIP

Good luck!

[GMaq]

Hi,

Soppel has some good suggestions there, you have lots of hard drive space that is for sure.

This is what I suggest, by the way AV Linux has GParted included so you can use it or use the LiveCD version of Gparted that Soppel suggested... either will work. Are you able to install Windows 7 again? I haven't dual booted with Windows for many years since Windows XP so I'm not sure how many times you can install Windows 7 before your license doesn't work any more.

In my opinion you should have Windows 7 installed on sda1 and let it have all 100 gigs and as soppel said Windows must be installed first, then your wife has plenty of room to do her stuff without worrying about having to save stuff on other partitions unless she is comfortable with that. Make sda2 an NTFS partition that way you have 500GB more storage that you can use with both Windows and AV Linux because AV Linux can use NTFS partitions as well, so if you and your wife have data you want to share like photos or movies or music you can store them here and both access them. I would format sda3 as 106 Gb and install AV Linux and format the 1.42 Gb left as your linux swap, a swap needs to be 1 or 2 Gb maximum anything larger and you are wasting space, the swap is only used if the RAM gets full and on a light desktop like AV that shouldn't be happening ever. A swap is a failsafe not an actively used partition. You can do whatever you want with sda4, it can be either ext4 or NTFS or you can make a few smaller partions on it to try other Linux distros.

As far as the ACPI issues, you will need to install AV Linux and then after it's installed you will have to add the acpi boot cheatcodes to /etc/default/grub so you won't have to manually enter them on every boot.

 You have a pretty tricky job lined up for yourself to get this all up and running...

[soppel]

Yes, I forget about the format NTFS. it's a good point Gmaq.

But don't forget to make an extended partition. As far as I know is the max partitions 4 at a hard disk
In an extended partition you can make as many partitions as you will. Okay, it stopped at 17 here  
No need for so many partitions, normaly. But if your wife will try linux after a while, you can choose Debian.  Debian needs 2 partitions.
I will not suggest to share homepartitions. It is possible they say, but it is a hassle. Just give every Operating system it's own /home.
however...you can share another partition

So you could have:
sda1   windows 7  ( ntfs)
sda2   data from both Operating Systems  (ntfs)
sda3:  extended  of the rest of the HDD
sda4: is not used because of the extended part
sda5 Swap  ( swap format)
sda6 AVlinux ( ext4)
sda7 /homeAVlinux ( ext4)
sda8 reserve 1 (ext4)
sda9 reserve 2 (ext4)

Remember that it is always possible two change the partitions whenever you want. ( okay for safety you should have back ups in that case, but I never needed those)


After you shrink the partition of windows, windows wil not start up normal the first time. Windows sees there is a modification and has to count his space again :-) But than it works fine.

Last point: I should not store everything what I produce in Linux at the ntfs partition. You are safer to put this at the ext4 part. Your wife cannot see what you  there from here windows OS 
No, I am serious: If your wife can't reach it with here windows OS, it is safer for viruses.


And yep....it could sound very difficult, but in fact it is not. Just write down what you want. And ask in doubt!
I guess, reading my bad English is worse than making the partitions
If you have another pc with internet ( maybe loan one) it gives a safe feeling that you can ask if you are stuck.

[Elvis]

Like I have said I can install one or thee other, but when I install both  win7 first or av5 first the other or (second one) over writes the first one's mbr. I have done it both ways, can not get it to work. maybe because I don't know how to rewrite the code for win7 or av5. I think I need someone that can give me a play by play, play book. I like what you have spec out, but the two don't like each other
sda1   windows 7  ( ntfs)
sda2   data from both Operating Systems  (ntfs)
sda3:  extended  of the rest of the HDD
sda4: is not used because of the extended part
sda5 Swap  ( swap format)
sda6 AVlinux ( ext4)
sda7 /homeAVlinux ( ext4)
sda8 reserve 1 (ext4)
sda9 reserve 2 (ext4)

I'm really thankfull for everyones help but, maybe some kind of hardwire switch to switch between two harddrives, like an on/off switch. I'm not a programer so I would not know how to fix av5 to work with win7. I don't know, but maybe you've got another idea that might work. I'm just a musician. I'm no help.
Thanks to all. you guys are great
Elvis

[jjfro]

Elvis, I'm not sure if my experience is applicable or not but I did have a multi-boot problem after recently installing AV Linux.  I'll describe my situation and what I did to fix it and maybe you can adapt some of it.

I've been running Windows 7 and Ubuntu Lucid in dual boot mode for some time off of a 160 GB hard disk (I also have a second 160 HDD that I use for backups).  Recently I decided to install a 128 GB solid state drive to speed things up.  So I made the SSD the primary drive in the BIOS and installed Windows 7 first and then Ubuntu.  I left the original HDD drive untouched thinking I could just remove the SSD and put things back the way they were originally should something go drastically wrong.  After rebooting from the Ubuntu install, I was pleasantly surprised to see that GRUB had detected all four OS's and had given me a quadruple-boot option on startup.  Cool!  Then I installed AV Linux on the SSD.  After rebooting from that, I was not-so-pleasantly surprised to find that I had lost the option to boot to the original HDD images AND AV Linux was the primary boot choice and I could not change that.  I tried selecting Lucid when I booted and running the StartUp-Manager utility to make Lucid the primary OS.  It didn't make any difference.  I could see that all 5 of the OS's showed up in the GRUB config file when I was running Lucid, but no amount of running StartUp-Manager or "sudo update-grub" would change anything.  It was like AV Linux had taken over GRUB and would not relinquish control.

So I did some googling and found a utility called Boot Repair.  I installed that in Lucid and ran it, selecting the default Repair option.  Presto!  I now had a quintuple-boot system with Lucid as the default.
So I'm not sure if that will help you or not.  It's a lot of extra work, but since you have the space, you might want to try installing Windows first and then Ubuntu.  If dual boot works after that, then you can go on to install AV Linux and use the Boot Repair utility if you had the same problem I did.

Following is my drive setup:
sda1: System Reserved (ntfs)
sda2: Windows (ntfs)
sda3: extended
sda5: Lucid (ext4)
sda6: swap
sda4: AV Linux (ext4)

sdc1: System Reserved (ntfs)
sdc2: Windows (ntfs)
sdc3: Data (ntfs)
sdc4: extended
sdc5: Lucid (ext4)
sdc6: swap

BTW, I notice that you don't have the System Reserved partitions that Windows 7 usually creates.  I'm not sure if that has anything to do with your issues or not.  When I install Windows, I select Custom (or Advanced, I can't remember exactly) and manually create the partitions with the size I want.  After I do that, I get a message that says something like "Windows may create additional partitions..."  That's the System Reserved thingy.  I'm not sure what, if anything, that has to do with the way the MBR works.

[soppel]

@ Elvis.
I'am still thinking for you, but one thing is for sure: you FIRST have to put windows on the pc. After that you can put a linux on it.
Windows has to be first disk on the first primary partition, it is the easiest way.
For a Linux it is doesn't mater where you put it. It starts up even from an extended partition.
That said I have a question.
If yoy put on windows, and after that AVlinux, can you boot up after that in AVlinux???
If yes : start up the root-terminal and type:
update-grub
let it roll, and reboot. see what happens.
Hopefully I understand your problem right. I try to, but English is not my mothertongue...

Did I understand right that you can install W7 and Ubuntu (for example)?




@jjfro:
In AVlinux is the program Startup-manager. This can you use also for it, I guess.

[jjfro]

@soppel:
You're right.  I see that StartUp-Manager is included with AV Linux.  I did not try to run it from there so I'm not sure if it would have resolved my issue.  Maybe not, because I just ran it after booting to AVL and it said my default boot choice should be AVL.  But when I rebooted it was still Ubuntu Lucid.  And I don't think it would help Elvis because apparently he can't dual boot at all.

[Elvis]

Windows7 is on the system and then I installed avlinux, but I did not have it write to the mbr because thats where windows7 is, after I installed avlinux it came up, but when I did a restart windows7 booted, so avlinux is installed but I don't know how to boot into it. i'm i making any sense? I can reinstall av to get to it.
elvis

[Elvis]

Music is easier
Is there a way to contact the people that created AV-Linux, I think that there could be a problem with AV-Linux, because I think the people that are trying to help me are very smart, so theres got to be issues with AV-Linux.

thanks guys for hanging in there
elvis

[trulan]

Edit:  Hang on, I removed my instructions to make sure I got everything right...

I'm still working on this, need to get the command exactly right for you here...
Using this guide:
http://linuxforums.org.uk/index.php?topic=7201.0

[Elvis]

I'm going to try that now. if I lose everything I will need to borrow my kids computer to get back to you. talk to you in a few.
Thanks
Elvis

Waiting at this point.
But that site looked like greek to me
Elvis

[soppel]

I see you are stilll online, so I just wish you good luck

[trulan]

Well sorry I posted some instructions then realized they were incomplete and could potentially render your system unbootable.  That's why I pulled them for the moment.

First off, you will need to install grub to the MBR for a dual-boot to work.  I'm not sure why grub is not finding your windows installation, this is supposed to 'just work' and it almost always does.  And as Windows is designed by people who think it is the only operating system in the world, the bootloader it installs is just not capable of booting a Linux OS or anything other than Windows.  So unless you install grub to the MBR while installing AVLinux, there will be no way to boot AVLinux.

You can write grub to the MBR without re-installing AVLinux:
1. Boot into the AVLinux live DVD.
2. Open the file manager and browse to each of the drives in the left-hand panel, just to make sure they are mounted.  Especially make sure you can see the contents of your Windows partition and your AVLinux partition.  Make special note of the size and name of the AVLinux partition.
3. Browse to the drive where AVLinux is installed.  We want to find the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg.  Open it in gedit (text editor).  It will look like Greek, but that's OK.  Scroll down in that file until you start seeing lines that start with 'menuentry'.  Yep, you guessed it, those are entries for your boot menu.  First will come a bunch of entries named 'Debian GNU/Linux', those are for AVLinux.  Next, you will see a few 'Memory test' entries.  Last, you 'should' see one or two "Windows" entries.  But from the problems it sounds like you are having, those will not be there.

More to follow, but I'll post this awhile.  I'll do my best to find a solution for you here...

[Elvis]

well, if evertone is giving up, that only means onething, back to windows, av-linux is not ready to be shared, its not vary good in the management department. I have only one more hope out there if he is still hanging in there, thats trulan.
Elvis

[trulan]

From here on out, you may 'break' the booting of Windows 7 temporarily.  If you don't want to do this, or want to wait, I understand.  You can always boot into the AVLinux liveDVD and look around without making any changes.

I tried my best to write up a simple guide for installing Grub to the MBR from the LiveDVD without completely re-installing AVLinux.  I feel like it just got way too complicated and will probalby feel overwhelming to you, so I'll tell you up front that you may find it easier to completely re-install AVLinux, and let the installer put Grub on the MBR for you.

In either case, after Grub has been written to the MBR and you can boot into AVLinux, we can then go about fixing Grub so it finds Windows 7.  One thing to try is to make sure your Windows partition (again, browse the files on it using the file manager).  Then, open your root terminal and run:

Code:

update-grub

This will output the various boot options it finds as it re-generates the Grub menu.  It SHOULD find Windows and say so.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Here's my attempt at a guide for re-installing Grub from the live DVD:

1. While running AVLinux from the liveDVD, open the file manager (as I posted above) and browse to each hard drive partition in the right-hand panel.  Make sure you can see files on the Windows partition and on the AVLinux partition.  Navigate to the /boot directory of the AVlinux partition.  You should see something like "/media/b90eb005-896f-42f2-a7ae-9345b5a30a36/boot" in the address bar of the file manager.  That long string of letters, numbers, and dashes is the partition ID of you AVLinux drive.  We need that for the next step.  Highlight it using your mouse or trackpad, and paste it into your terminal at the correct place by middle-clicking (clicking the scroll wheel, or clicking both buttons at the same time if you don't have a scroll wheel).
3. When you're ready to go for it, open a Root Terminal in the accessories menu.  Install Grub to the MBR with this command:

Code:

grub-install --boot-directory=/media/b90eb005-896f-42f2-a7ae-9345b5a30a36/boot /dev/sda

Again, that long row of letters and numbers is the ID of my AVLinux partition here, yours will be different.

[trulan]

Hi again Elvis, I just read your latest post.  I am sorry you are being frustrated with this and I can certainly sympathize.  Please understand that the bootloader that comes with AVLinux (Grub2) is not made or maintained by us, it comes from the Debian Linux base that we use to make AVLinux.  Also please understand that in almost every case, Grub does its thing properly and a dual-boot environment can be set up without any issues.  But as with all things Computer, sometimes things go wrong.  It is very unfortunate that in your case it is not working properly.

I will try to find some more help for you.  The path to getting a dual-boot working is, as has been said before:
1. Install Windows.
2. Install AVLinux, and make sure to install Grub to the MBR.
3. Once booted into your AVLinux installation, we can then fix Grub so that it will find and boot Windows properly.  We can't fix it before that point, because the automatic stuff that is supposed to make it work right the first time is not working in your case for some reason.

IF you still want to get this working, (and I can certainly understand if you are done with it and ready to give up), we will do everything we can to help you.  I apologize again for how difficult this is being for you.

[Elvis]

turlan, I will try this in about 2-3 hours got to run for now, I'm so greatfull that you are helping me and hanging in there.
Thank you, THANK YOU varyMUCH
Elvis

[trulan]

Great.  I have some other stuff to do this afternoon but I will try to check back in occasionally.  One thing you can try from the live DVD before re-installing anything is opening the root terminal and running:

Code:

os-prober

If that finds Windows 7, great!  Install and it will work.
If that does not find Windows 7, then if you install, you will only be able to boot into AVLinux.  If we can figure out why os-prober is not finding Windows and fix that problem, all will be well.

Also, a solution that has worked for some people has been to boot up using the Windows installation DVD and use that to repair the Windows boot sector, after which the AVLinux installer should work properly.  I can't give you any more help on using the Windows disc.  But it would be worth a try.  It would also allow you fix Windows booting without reinstalling Windows, I believe.

Yet another potential problem is that some Linux boot information may have gotten on your Windows partition by mistake.  If that is the case, there will be both a /Boot directory on your Windows drive (the correct Windows boot directory) and a /boot directory (Linux stuff that should not be there).  From what I've found via Google, the /boot directory (the one that is not capitalized) is confusing os-prober and causing it not to find the /Boot directory, which is what it needs to recognize Windows 7.

[Elvis]

Sorry it took so long to get back to you
Success
First of all I would like to thank Gmaq for getting the ball rollin', with not having someone to spear head things off others might not have joined in, soppel for setting up the partitions and idea for using a partition for data for both operating systems, and jjfro for his ideas on his own experiences. A big Thanks goes out to all of you, I have both operating systems running and trulan you hung in there and put it all together, I followed your instructions, so a Big, Thank You so much. I can’t thank all of you enough. My wife she has her windows7 and I have my AV-Linux, somewhat working. But I'm so excited to get this far and now she can share her pictures and I can share my music, by the way she sings with me as my Ann Margret when we have a duet show, yes she's a true red head.

Now I need to work on my sound, I get no sound. Should I start a new post for that? I have tried different combinations.

My graphic card I use - nVidia GeForce GTX560 HDMI hooked thru a Pioneer Receiver.
And the system does not see my Lite-On  IHBS112-29 12X internal blue-ray disc writer.
Well if you go to Disk Utility or other utilities they seem to see the HDMI and the CD player, but programs don't.

THANKS ONCE AGAIN
Elvis

[trulan]

Glad it's working!

To get your video card fully working, you'll very likely need to install NVidia's proprietary drivers.  The easiest way to do this is to use the Video Driver Maintenance Mode boot option in your Grub menu.  It will boot up to a text login.  Login as root, and it should automatically install the drivers (this needs a wired internet connection to work properly).  For more information, see the AVLinux manual.

Regarding your sound, you can start a different thread if you like but it doesn't matter.  A good place to start figuring that out is if you post the output of:

Code:

aplay -l

(run that in a terminal)

I don't know anything about blue-ray drives.  Anybody else have any ideas on that?

[Elvis]

I'll try to reboot
thank you
Elvis

[Elvis]

elvis@elvis-av:~$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 0: ALC889 Analog [ALC889 Analog]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: PCH [HDA Intel PCH], device 1: ALC889 Digital [ALC889 Digital]
  Subdevices: 0/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 8: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 9: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
elvis@elvis-av:~$
Would card 0: be the on board motherboard audio device and the card 1 be HDMI video card?
jack see what we are looking at, and up above the drop down from top to bottom reads: dummy, sun, oss, alsa, portaudio, coreaudio, freebob, firewire, net, netone?
I tried different combinations. no luck are their other audio setting I need to look at?
sorry about being such a pain in the axx
Elvis

[soppel]

Great Elvis that it is working!  That was the easy part 

About the sound.
I always first start alsamixer.
Just type "alsamixer" in the the terminal and it starts up.
press F6 and choose the soundcard you want to use.

Then open Qjackctl ( in the menu under audio)
klick on set-up and in the right collumn at interface klick at >
than choose there the same soundcard.
After that you can start jack.

If you still have no sound you have to play with the sliders in alsamixer.
Be sure to unmute those.
I have a E-Mu1616 card and that has about 30 sliders, I hope you don't have that much, because it is a bit of try and error for the right settings
If you have sound WRITE DOWN THE SETTINGS!  ( I made an tabell in libreoffice calc. so it is easy to find and to change)
If alsa has the right settings, you don't have to do this the next time. It will start in the last set-up. So that is easy.




 

[Elvis]

I tried and no luck. when the mixer comes up I can adjust all my speakers, not much to it, its a small program with vary little controls. any more I can try?
Thank you
Elvis

PS: I'm going to move to my other post, see you there.