mint4win on a dual partition

[keithp]

I want to install Linuxmint on a computer which has Windows7 OEM installed (no disks). It has two partitions, a main and a rescue.

From reading the Ubuntu forums, I understand that if I try to install on a two partition machine, not only will mint4win (or wubi, for a Ubuntu installation) probably not install correctly, but will probably wreck the Windows7 installation.

Can anyone comment on this, please?

For various reasons, dual booting or fitting a second hard drive, cannot be done on this machine.

Many thanks

Keith

[Pierre]

can you give a reason as to why you can't dual boot ?.

ie:- shrink the C: drive under win7, & use that portion of the hdd for 'nix.

[keithp]

There are several reasons why I can't dual boot.

I am going to try to very gently introduce the computer's "Windows7 enthusiast" owner to Linux and see if it will get him to consider changing.

In my opinion, him being able to boot into Windows as usual and then select Mint as what you might call 'an ordinary program' is better than his using Grub.

Secondly, he has a most peculiar inurance on the computer. The insurance company has taken over the 2 year warranty from the manufacturer. The insurance states that he can, in effect, do nothing to the machine apart from such every day things like plugging periferals in and installing standard software. Oh, and using the rescue partition. In theory, I can't even remove the side panel to clean inside the machine. Anything else has to be done by one of their chosen registered computer engineers. So, we think that me installing another operating system and dual booting will void the warranty and insurance. We are certainly not going to the expense of getting their engineer to modify the hard drive. He probably has never heard of dual booting and wouldn't know what to do!

The owner is against me messing about with his hard drve as well, in case it destroys his Windows installation.

So, Mint4Win is the only solution.

Hope I have made this clear.

Cheers

Keith

[willie42]

An Idea would be use a thumb Drive and boot from it. You can show the owner convert them over and not mess with any of the hard ware on the system

[jcg0624]

Make an image of his entire drive. Test the image make sure it is good. Then do what you want to the drive. You hhave an image to restore to original state if need be.

[LarryP]

Realize it's bee a few weeks since you asked your question but thought I'd trow my opinion in. Given the extended warranty says something about installing STANARD software and given the owner is uncomfortable with someone "messing about " with his partitions, I'd go with a persistant usb stick. that way nothing is done to jepordize the warranty and he has something he can also move from pc to pc if he wants

[Tenzy]

I didn't know that you couldn't use wubi on a dual partition. I installed mint 9 and mint 10 on my netbook that way.
It has a windows 7 partition, a data partition (Where I installed Mint) and a hidden recovery partition.

Was I extremely lucky?