Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu in Perfect Harmony

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Dual-Boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu in Perfect HarmonyWindows 7 and Ubuntu,

despite their opposing

missions, can get along like

best pals on a single

computer. Here's how to set

up a dual boot system that lets

you enjoy the best of both

worlds in perfect harmony.

By default, Windows 7 takes

over your boot-up process and

wants to be your only OS, and

Linux treats Windows like a

weekend hobby you keep in a

shed somewhere on your hard

drive. But I've been dual-

booting Ubuntu and some version of Windows 7 for nearly a year, and I've learned a lot about inconveniences, annoyances,

and file-sharing necessities, and now I'll walk you through how to set up your systems to achieve a peaceful union of your

dual-boot OSes. (Both with Windows 7 already installed, and with a clean system ready for a new dual-OS existence.)

Follow through this guide, and I'll explain how to rebuild a system from the ground up with Windows 7 and Ubuntu, with

either a backed-up and cleaned-out hard drive (recommended) or Windows 7 already installed. When we're done, you can

work and play in either operating system, quickly and conveniently access your documents, music, pictures, and other files

without worry or inconvenience, and boot into either system without having to worry about whether Windows is going to get

mad at you. Plus, when Ubuntu 10.04 or Windows 8 come along, you'll find it much easier to install either one without

having to start over entirely from scratch.

What you'll need

Setting up your hard drive

If you've got nothing installed on your system, or you've got your data backed up and you're ready to start from scratch, you're

in a great position--skip down to the "Partition your system" section. If you've got Windows already installed, you can still

make a spot for Ubuntu, though.

(Only) If Windows is already installed: You're going to "shrink" the partition that Windows 7 installed itself on. Before we do

that, clean out any really unnecessary applications and data from your system (we like Revo Uninstaller for doing this).

Also, open up "Computer" and take note of how much space remains on your main hard drive, presumably labeled "C:".

Head to the Start menu, type "disk management" into the search box, and hit Enter.

Windows 7 probably put two partitions on your hard drive: one, about 100 MB in size, holding system restoration data. We

don't want to touch it. Right-click on the bigger partition to the right, and choose Shrink Partition.

After a little bit of hard drive

activity and a "Please wait"

window, you'll get back the

size you can shrink your

Windows partition by.

If the space Windows offers

doesn't jibe with what your

Computer view told you was

"remaining," you might need to

hit Cancel, then head back

and defragment your hard

Windows 7 installation disc: For clean installations, either a full installation copy or an upgrade disc is needed. If

you own an upgrade disc but want to start from scratch, there's a way to do a clean install with an upgrade disc,

though that's a rather gray-area route. Then again, there's probably not a person on this earth that doesn't have a

licensed copy of XP or Vista somewhere in their past.

Ubuntu 9.10 installation image: You can grab an ISO at Ubuntu.com, or hit "Alternative download options" to reveal

a (usually very fast) BitTorrent link. You'll want to get the ubuntu-9.10-desktop-i386.iso download for 32-bit

systems, or ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent for 64-bit on AMD or Intel systems (despite the name).

Blank CD or empty USB drive: You'll need one of these for burning the Ubuntu ISO, or loading it for USB boot. If

you're going the thumb drive route, grab UNetBootin for Windows or Linux, plug in your USB drive, and load it with the

downloaded ISO image.

All your data backed up: Even if you're pulling this off with Windows 7 already installed and your media and

documents present, you'll want to have a fallback in case things go awry. Which they shouldn't, but, naturally, you

never know.

Free time: I'd reckon it takes about 2 hours to pull off two OS installs on a clean system; more if you've got a lot of

data to move around.

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drive, and take some of the

steps laid out by the How-To

Geek. Run the Disk

Management tool again and try

a Shrink Volume operation

again, and free up as much

space as you can.

Partition your system: You're aiming to set up a system

with three partitions, or sections, to its hard drive: One lean

partition for the Windows operating system and

applications running from it, another just-big-enough

partition for Ubuntu and its own applications, and then a

much larger data partition that houses all the data you'll

want access to from either one. Documents, music,

pictures, application profiles—it all goes in another section

I'll call "Storage" for this tutorial.

How do you get there? We're going to use GParted, the

Linux-based uber-tool for all things hard drive. You could grab the Live CD if you felt like it, but since you've already

downloaded an Ubuntu installer, you can simply boot a "live," no-risk session of Ubuntu from your CD or USB stick and run

GParted from there. Once you're inside Ubuntu, head to the System menu in the upper left when you get to a desktop, then

choose the Administration menu and GParted under it.

You'll see your system's hard

drive and its partitions laid out.

You're going to create

partitions for Linux and your

storage space, but not

Windows—we'll let the

Windows installation carve out

its own recovery partition and

operating space. On my own

system, I give Windows 15 GB

of unallocated space, and

Ubuntu another 15 GB of space right after it, with whatever's left kept as storage space. Then again, I've only got a 100 GB

hard drive and don't run huge games or applications, so you can probably give your two operating systems a bit more

space to grow.

Click on the unallocated space and hit the "New" button at the far left. In the "Free space preceding" section, click and hold

the up button, or enter a number of megabytes, to leave space for Windows at the front. When you've got the "space

preceding" set, set the actual size of the Ubuntu partition in the "New Size" section, and leave "Free space following" alone.

Choose "unformatted" under file system—we'll let Ubuntu do the format itself and hit "Add." Back at the main GParted

window, click on the space to the right of your two OS spaces, hit "New" again, and set the file system as "ntfs." Give it a

label like "Storage," hit "Add," and at the main GParted window, hit the checkmark button to apply your changes. Once it's

done, exit out of GParted and shut down the system from the pull-down menu in the upper-right corner.

If Windows is already installed: If you've shrunk down its partition for free space and booted into a live Ubuntu or GParted,

click on the "Unallocated" piece next to the two "ntfs" partitions that represent your Windows 7 installation and system

recovery tools. Create a 15(-ish) GB unformatted partition, and give it a label like Ubuntu. If you've got a good deal of space

left, format it as "ntfs" and label it something like "Storage." If you can just barely fit the Ubuntu partition, you can just keep

your media files in the Windows partition—until you can remedy this with a full wipe-and-install down the line.

Experienced Linux geeks might be wondering where the swap space is going—but don't worry, we'll create one, just not in

its own partition.

Installing and configuring Windows

Grab your Windows 7 installation disc—either a full copy or modified upgrade disc, and insert it into your DVD drive. If your

system isn't set up to boot from CD or DVD drive, look for the button to press at start-up for "Boot options" or something

similar, or hit up your system maker's help guides to learn how to change your boot order in the BIOS settings.

Follow through the Windows 7 installation, being sure to choose "Custom" for the installation method and to point it at that

unallocated space we created at the beginning of your hard disk, not the NTFS-formatted media/storage space we made

earlier:

Work your way through the

Windows 7 installation, all the

way until you reach the

Windows desktop. Feel free to

set up whatever programs or

apps you want, but what we

really want to do is set up your

Storage partition to house your



pictures, music, video, and

other files, and make your

Libraries point to them.

Hit the Start menu, click Computer, and double-click on the hard drive named "Storage" (assuming you named it that

earlier). In there, right-click and create new folders (or hit Ctrl+Shift+N) for the files you'll be using with both systems. I

usually create folders labeled Documents, Music, Pictures, and Videos—I could also see folders for saved games and

data files from big software packages. Copy your media files into these folders now, if you'd like, but we've got a bit more

tweaking to pull off.

In the left-hand sidebar, you'll see your "Libraries" for documents, music, pictures, and video. At the moment, they point to

your Public shared folders and the My Pictures-type folders on your main Windows drive. Click once on any of the Libraries,

and at the top of the main panel, you'll see text stating that this library "Includes: 2 locations ...". Click the blue text on "2

locations," then click on each of the folders below and hit "Remove" on the right-hand side. Now hit "Add" and select the

corresponding folder on your Storage drive. Do the same for all your music, pictures, videos, and other media folders.

Want to add another library for

quick access? Right-click

somewhere on the desktop,

choose New->Library, and

follow the steps.

That's about it for Windows.

Now get your Ubuntu CD or

USB stick ready and insert it in

your system. Ignore whatever

auto-play prompts appear, and

restart your system.

Installing and

configuring Ubuntu

Restart your computer, this

time booting from your Ubuntu Live CD or USB boot drive. When your system boots up, choose your language, select "Try

Ubuntu without any changes to your computer," and you'll boot into a "live" desktop, run entirely off the CD or USB stick.

Once you're booted up, try connecting to the internet from the network icon in the upper-right—it helps during the installation

process, ensures your network is working, and gives you something to do (Firefox) while the system installs.

Click the "Install" link on the desktop, and fill out the necessary language/location/keyboard info (most U.S. users can skip

through the first 3 screens). When you hit the "Prepare disk space" section, select the "Specify partitions manually" option,

then hit Forward. Select the free space that's after your first two Windows partitions with ntfs formats, then hit the "Add"

button at bottom. Your partition should already be sized correctly, and the only thing to change is set "/" as a mount point.

Here's what your screen should look like:

Click OK, then finish through

with the Ubuntu installation. If

it catches your Windows 7

installation, it might ask if you

want to import settings from

inside it—you can, if you'd like,

but I usually skip this. Wait for

the installation to finish,

remove the CD or thumb drive,

and reboot your system.

When you start up again, you'll

see a list of OS options. The

only ones you need concern yourself with are Windows 7 and the top-most Ubuntu line. You can prettify and fix up this

screen, change its settings, and modify its order later on. For now, let's head into Ubuntu.

We're going to make the same kind of folder access change we did in Windows. Click up on the "Places" menu, choose

"Home Folder," and check out the left-hand sidebar. It's full of links to Documents, Pictures, and the like, but they all point to

locations inside your home folder, on the Linux drive that Windows can't read. Click once on any of those folders, then right-

click and hit Remove.

You should see your "Storage" partition in the left-hand

sidebar, but without that name—more like "100GB

filesystem." Double-click it, type in the administrator

password you gave when installing, and you'll see your

Documents, Music, etc. Click and drag those folders into

the space where the other folders were, and now you'll

have access to them from the "Places" menu, as well as

any file explorer window you have open.

Ubuntu won't "mount," or make available, your Windows 7



18

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more about windows7

By Kevin Purdy

Nov 12, 2009 09:30 AM 413,054 147

and Storage drives on boot-up, however, and we at least

want constant access to the Storage drive. To fix that, head to Software Sources in the System->Administration menu. From

there go to Applications, then the Ubuntu Software Center at the bottom. Under the "Ubuntu Software" and "Updates"

sections, add a check to the un-checked sources, like Restricted, Multiverse, Proposed, and Backports. Hit "Close," and

agree to Reload your software sources.

Finally! Head to the Applications menu and pick the Ubuntu

Software Center. In there, search for "ntfs-config," and

double-click on the NTFS Configuration Tool that's the first

result. Install it, then close the Software Center. If you've got

the "Storage" or Windows 7 partitions mounted, head to

any location in Places and then click the eject icon next to

those drives in the left-hand sidebar. Now head to the

System->Administration menu and pick the NTFS

Configuration Tool.

You'll see a few partitions listed, likely as /dev/sda1,

/dev/sda2, and the like. If you only want your storage drive,

it should be listed as /dev/sda3 or something similar--just not the first or second options. Check the box for "Add," click in

the "Mount point" column to give it a name (Storage, perhaps?), and hit "Apply." Check both boxes on the next window to

allow read/write access, and hit OK, and you're done. Now the drive with all your stuff is accessible to Windows and Linux at

all times.

Adding swap to Ubuntu

"Swap" memory is a section of the hard drive that your system's memory spills over into when it gets full and busy. Until

recently, I'd been creating a whole separate partition for it. Recently, though, I've found that swap isn't always necessary on

systems with a large amount of memory, and that swap can simply be a file tucked away on your hard drive somewhere.

Follow the Ubuntu help wiki's instructions for adding more swap, but consider changing the location they suggest putting

the swap file—/mnt/swap/ for the place your Storage is held—/media/Storage, in my case.

Share Firefox profiles and more

That's about it for this guide to setting up a harmonious Windows and Ubuntu existence, but I recommend you also check

out our previous guide to using a single data store when dual-booting. It explains the nitty-gritty of sharing Firefox,

Thunderbird, and Pidgin profiles between Linux and Windows for a consistent experience, as well as a few other dual-boot

tricks.

You might also want to consider creating virtual machines with VirtualBox for those moments when you're in one OS and

need to get at the other. Ubuntu is free to create as many instances as you want, of course, and Windows 7 (Professional

and Ultimate) are very friendly with non-activated copies—not that either can't be otherwise activated in cases where it's just

a double-use issue.

What'd I miss that makes Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 get along even better? What needs clarifying or fixing? Tell us your

questions and solutions in the comments.

Send an email to Kevin Purdy, the author of this post, at [email protected].

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