I want dual boot but windows won't load.

[edzell]

Refurbished Dell Aspire recently purchased without O/S.
WD 300G hard drive
Using legacy BIOS

What I want: Win XP dual boot with linux Mint (same as I already have on an older laptop)

Zeros written to WD hard drive using free killdisk CD.
Partition table and two 15G NTFS partitions created using gparted on live Mint DVD,
Running XP instal disk I get an error message. Paraphrasing it slightly:

"Problem detected; shutting down windows to prevent damage.
Try restart. Otherwise check for virus, remove newly installed HD/controller.
Check HD configured & terminated. Run CHKDSK /F for HD corruption & restart.
Tech info:
*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xf78d2524,0xc0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)"

At present I have/know no way of checking the hard drive
This install disk and a duplicate have worked in the past on other machines.
Linux mint live DVD loads and will install on this machine.
I need XP so as to run some older programs
I'm stuck.

Advice & suggestions welcome; thanks in advance!

[all41]

Refurbished Dell Aspire recently purchased without O/S.
WD 300G hard drive
Using legacy BIOS

What I want: Win XP dual boot with linux Mint (same as I already have on an older laptop)

Zeros written to WD hard drive using free killdisk CD.
Partition table and two 15G NTFS partitions created using gparted on live Mint DVD,
Running XP instal disk I get an error message. Paraphrasing it slightly:

"Problem detected; shutting down windows to prevent damage.
Try restart. Otherwise check for virus, remove newly installed HD/controller.
Check HD configured & terminated. Run CHKDSK /F for HD corruption & restart.
Tech info:
*** STOP: 0x0000007B (0xf78d2524,0xc0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)"

At present I have/know no way of checking the hard drive
This install disk and a duplicate have worked in the past on other machines.
Linux mint live DVD loads and will install on this machine.
I need XP so as to run some older programs
I'm stuck.

Advice & suggestions welcome; thanks in advance!

With a fresh partition table I would let XP install have it's way with the hd--then afterwards I would use XP to resize the partition
to make room for Mint. No need to preformat the now unallocated space--use the 'something else' option during install

[edzell]

To repeat - Windows will NOT load - see the long error message I posted - and I have no problem installing Mint after partitioning for both NTFS and ext4. Mint is running as I write. The problem is with the windows installer, which thinks there's a problem with the hard drive, although Mint is quite happy with it.

My assumption is that there is something left on the HD from a previous OS, but which killdisk fails to kill. I don't know what I can do now.

[AndyMH]

You could run XP in a VM using virtualbox, it's what I do. I have one program, the WIS for a Saab that will only run under XP. That is the sole purpose of the VM. If you want to install dual boot with XP, I would give XP a blank drive to install to and then shrink the partition(s) afterwards to create space to install mint into.

To zero the drive in linux:

Code: Select all

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX count=1

replace sdX with the correct drive, e.g. sda, and make sure it is correct, you don't want to wipe the partition table on the wrong drive. Obvious question - you did put a legacy/msdos partition table on the drive didn't you? I suspect XP won't understand gpt drives.

[legacypowers]

This isn't a Windows XP support forum but...
Your BIOS is set for the sata controller be AHCI or RAID mode? if that's the case it might be why Windows XP is complaining, you will need to load the appropriate driver for AHCI/ RAID on Windows XP setup, in the case of XP you can only use a floppy drive, or modify the install media slipstreaming the desired driver with nLite( i think that is the name of the tool that allows you to do it)

[AndyMH]

Good question, how old is that laptop? I'd assumed that XP = old laptop. It maybe that XP will just not install if the laptop is too new. The output from inxi -FxD would help.

[edzell]

@AndyMH, @legacypowers Thanks for the replies & suggestions. I was already considering virtualbox although I'm not familiar with it and I'm still installing bits of my Mint setup. Already tried loading XP on a blank disk but it didn't work. Yes, using MSDOS partition table. I'm completely ignorant about the AHCI/RAID issue. Thanks for the disk-wiping code. I'll save it for future reference. This is a one-drive machine. I guess I can't wipe the disk that would be running the command .

I've decided to stop trying to dual-boot XP, and assume I can get it to run in virtualbox. Meantime thanks once more for your advice. I don't suppose I can mark this 'solved' - how about 'abandoned ' ??

I still have a machine running Windows 98 because of a program my wife won't give up!

[AndyMH]

I still have a machine running Windows 98 because of a program my wife won't give up!

Might be worth having a look at wine, or if you want an easier life, crossover (the commercial version, you can try it for free). It does have 'win98 bottles'. I have a win98 bottle running photoshop 7.0 (I don't know why, I don't use it anymore) and home designer suite 6.0. Home designer runs better with crossover than it did running under win7.

[edzell]

Thanks Andy. I do use Crossover for a couple of things. I'm addicted to an old version of Calendarscope and Quickbooks (5.0!) but haven't been able to get that one to work in Xover. Newer QB versions could run but are way too bloated for me. The Win98 program my wife uses is on a truly ancient machine used for nothing else. Last time we bought a literally new computer was the year 2000. What we have now are cast-offs and the 'new' refurbished Aspire. I'm typing this on a Lenovo T410 that seems to be dying.

If I was 50-60 years younger I'd be tempted to learn enough linux to try writing my own programs. I'm too far gone for that. Started trying to build a veggie-gardening database with LibreOffice but it was too mind bending and I reverted to spreadsheets with supplementary notebooks.

[AndyMH]

What we have now are cast-offs and the 'new' refurbished Aspire. I'm typing this on a Lenovo T410 that seems to be dying.

Never bought a new laptop in 20 years, all second-hand thinkpads, got a T60 gathering dust and did have a T410S. Works, but randomly (maybe once a day, or every few days) just dies. Reboot okay. Suspect the motherboard, so I got a T430. Now I have 4 x T430, most heavily modified. Can't imagine buying anything other than a used thinkpad, they 'just work' with linux.