Hi - I'm a bear of little brain - which allows me to rush in where angels fear to tread. Not knowing what I'm doing has never discouraged me from experimentation - so I am very familiar with that sinking feeling that accompanies BSOD followed by failure to boot. For many years, life was simple - I used single boot Windows 98/XP/Vista combined with Paragon external backups - so - when I wrecked the OS (regular occurrence) - restore and reboot was simple and painless.
A couple of months ago, I invested in a super-duper i7 2600k and the urge to expand my horizons was irresistible. First there was overclocking - I've got that out of my system - I'm now content to run at stock speeds. Next came dual booting - I tried Ubuntu and liked it - so, I setup Windows 7 (64 bit) first and then installed Ubuntu 10.10 (64 bit) alongside. I switched from Paragon to Clonezilla - since Clonezilla handles all the file systems for windows and linux and works first time every time. UNFORTUNATELY - in a dual boot situation, Clonezilla restore of the ubuntu partition (or of the entire disk W7+ubuntu) always runs into some kind of boot loader problem - it always warns me that I need to REINIT the linux boot loader - and then takes me to a black screen where I'm invited to enter commands - I end up re-installing W7 then Ubuntu and rebuilding the systems - until I run into the next disaster ...
So ... I rubbed my two brain cells together - and concluded that virtualization was the answer - single boot, but multiple OS - therefore simple restore - I spent 2 -3 weeks of solid experimentation with all of the mainstream VM options - in each case, I either ran into BSOD or else the VM was unsatisfactory by virtue of poor sound / no dvd playback / lack of good visual effects or some other situation that I deemed unacceptable.
So - back to dual booting - but this time (unusually) - I want to do it right. This is where EasyBCD comes to the rescue - I hope.
I have printed your guide (Adding Ubuntu to the Windows Bootloader) and found that guide to be simple/painless - dual booting is now quicker and easier. So far so good.
I have got W7 and Ubuntu 11.04 working - everything as I want it to be. I'm using a ramdisk in W7 for all temporary files and downloads - which together with SSD drive makes the OS extremely responsive. I intend to do further work to expand the role of ramdisk for W7 and ubuntu - which means that I'm going to break one of the OS sooner or later.
Now - here's the thing - I want to PLAN for the next disaster - so that recovery is quick and painless - I want to know in advance, exactly what I need to do to get my systems restored and booting without problems.
What preparations should I make to avoid boot problems in future?
Your thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated.
A couple of months ago, I invested in a super-duper i7 2600k and the urge to expand my horizons was irresistible. First there was overclocking - I've got that out of my system - I'm now content to run at stock speeds. Next came dual booting - I tried Ubuntu and liked it - so, I setup Windows 7 (64 bit) first and then installed Ubuntu 10.10 (64 bit) alongside. I switched from Paragon to Clonezilla - since Clonezilla handles all the file systems for windows and linux and works first time every time. UNFORTUNATELY - in a dual boot situation, Clonezilla restore of the ubuntu partition (or of the entire disk W7+ubuntu) always runs into some kind of boot loader problem - it always warns me that I need to REINIT the linux boot loader - and then takes me to a black screen where I'm invited to enter commands - I end up re-installing W7 then Ubuntu and rebuilding the systems - until I run into the next disaster ...
So ... I rubbed my two brain cells together - and concluded that virtualization was the answer - single boot, but multiple OS - therefore simple restore - I spent 2 -3 weeks of solid experimentation with all of the mainstream VM options - in each case, I either ran into BSOD or else the VM was unsatisfactory by virtue of poor sound / no dvd playback / lack of good visual effects or some other situation that I deemed unacceptable.
So - back to dual booting - but this time (unusually) - I want to do it right. This is where EasyBCD comes to the rescue - I hope.
I have printed your guide (Adding Ubuntu to the Windows Bootloader) and found that guide to be simple/painless - dual booting is now quicker and easier. So far so good.
I have got W7 and Ubuntu 11.04 working - everything as I want it to be. I'm using a ramdisk in W7 for all temporary files and downloads - which together with SSD drive makes the OS extremely responsive. I intend to do further work to expand the role of ramdisk for W7 and ubuntu - which means that I'm going to break one of the OS sooner or later.
Now - here's the thing - I want to PLAN for the next disaster - so that recovery is quick and painless - I want to know in advance, exactly what I need to do to get my systems restored and booting without problems.
What preparations should I make to avoid boot problems in future?
Your thoughts/advice would be greatly appreciated.
