Dual boot Win 7 with mint xfce

[FictionWorm]

I am currently using mint XFCE as my main OS. I want to dual boot it with windows 7 to play old games like grand theft auto series, Serious Sam etc. Does windows 7 support dual boot ?
My PC specs :- 4gb ram, Intel Pentium G3220t 2.6 ghz, 240 gb SSD

[MiZoG]

Yes you can dual boot.
But it is better to install Windows first. And since you want to install Windows 7, that means that you have to install both OSes in "legacy" mode.
You might be able to run those old games on Linux via Wine but that will perhaps involve some learning curve.

[FictionWorm]

Thanks for replying! Could you elaborate what do you mean by legacy mode and how to install the OSes in it. Sorry, i am a noob in topics regarding booting.

[bendipa]

Windows 7 is compatible with UEFI. You don't need Legacy BIOS, unless your computer was built before 2010 and your mobo did not come with a UEFI chip.. Go into uour BIOS and check (normally under the boot tab) that UEFI settings exist, and that your computer is set to UEFI. When you've done that, install Windows 7 first (see para. Reformatting the drive using a different partition style).

[AndyMH]

When win7 shipped most computers booted legacy, MS added the capability to boot UEFI, think this was later. To check how you are currently booting open a terminal and efibootmgr. If it tells you EFI variables are not supported you are booting legacy, anything else is UEFI.

With legacy the bootloader lives in the first sector on the drive, so the last OS installed will be in charge of booting because it will have overwritten the bootloader that was there before.

Long time since I did it (I started with mint dual booting with win7), so I can't remember how many partitions win7 wants, think it maybe two, win C: and a recovery partition. It would help to see the output from sudo parted --list to see how your drive is currently setup. Read this on how to post terminal output:
viewtopic.php?p=2119362&hilit=terminal#p2119362

Installing win first is the best advice, that means you will need to re-install mint. Don't know if win7 will play nice installing alongside another OS. As a minimum you would need to re-install grub.

[ThaCrip]

If your GPU is up to a certain modern standard there is a reasonable chance those games will work through Lutris paired with GloriousEggroll runner for Lutris and you won't even need Windows 7. what GPU do you have?

on my backup computer I had to setup Mint on SSD and Win7 on 80GB IDE since on a old AMD GPU I have only works with 'radeon' driver and not the one it seems to need for current gaming standards on the AMD side of things which is 'amdgpu'. personally I would generally avoid installing Mint/Win7 on the same SSD/HDD.

note: the oldest game I play on my main PC (i5-3550 paired with a 1050 Ti 4GB GPU) is from 2002 (Mafia (2002)) and it works. to play that same game on my backup computer I had to use Win7 because with Mint it does not have current proper GPU driver support for a Radeon 5670 512MB(which I bought in the year 2010), but that works well on Win7, just not on Linux for games. lately I have even been playing a older game 'Scarface (2006)', which is GTA like, and that works well after some tweaks/mods on my main PC (I would assume it will work on my old Win7 setup to if I tried it).

p.s. I also use a updated Win7 ISO as of Jan 2023 (using 'Integrate7' script by user 'wkeller' on another forum (which currently says up to date as of Feb 2023 but barely anything has changed since I used it so I just stick with what I have)) as this makes it so when you install you don't have to run any updates basically (and not to mention it strips out excess junk) which will save a lot of time. but the ISO it creates is about 2.1GB larger than stock official Win7 SP1 x64 Pro ISO as it won't fit on a DVD (stock ISO will fit on a DVD) as you will have to use a bootable USB.

[FictionWorm]

As for the GPU. i have a pretty potato Intel Haswell GT1 {thats what it says}. The updates iso seems to be a good choice for me, could you please provide me the download link for it? It would be a great help.

[FictionWorm]

When win7 shipped most computers booted legacy, MS added the capability to boot UEFI, think this was later. To check how you are currently booting open a terminal and efibootmgr. If it tells you EFI variables are not supported you are booting legacy, anything else is UEFI.

With legacy the bootloader lives in the first sector on the drive, so the last OS installed will be in charge of booting because it will have overwritten the bootloader that was there before.

Long time since I did it (I started with mint dual booting with win7), so I can't remember how many partitions win7 wants, think it maybe two, win C: and a recovery partition. It would help to see the output from sudo parted --list to see how your drive is currently setup. Read this on how to post terminal output:
viewtopic.php?p=2119362&hilit=terminal#p2119362

Installing win first is the best advice, that means you will need to re-install mint. Don't know if win7 will play nice installing alongside another OS. As a minimum you would need to re-install grub.

Unfortunately,i have leagacy BIOS. Would it be a problem while dual booting? Or would it be just as easy ?

[ThaCrip]

As for the GPU. i have a pretty potato Intel Haswell GT1 {thats what it says}. The updates iso seems to be a good choice for me, could you please provide me the download link for it? It would be a great help.

Well if you got a built-in GPU from Intel that pretty much means it's going to be generally bad for gaming straight up, Linux or Windows. I would not expect to play many games with that GPU. you can probably find a older/used/near dirt cheap GPU to play older games though on Win7 if you are playing games from the 2000's.

but as for the Win7 ISO... actually there is a small script you download and as long as you still have a official Win7 SP1 Pro x64 ISO etc you can make the ISO yourself as the script basically do it all for you.

if you need a official Win7 SP1 Pro x64 English the SHA-1 hash of it I started with, which I am sure you can find online, is "0bcfc54019ea175b1ee51f6d2b207a3d14dd2b58" (that's the ISO I personally started with) as that should be the official one from Microsoft. then with that you can use that script to create a updated ISO...

-Official ISO (which is from the year 2011 I think) = 3.1 GiB (3,320,903,680 bytes)
-Updated ISO (which mine is from Jan 2023 (as the current one is slightly updated from what I have)) = 5.1 GiB (5,431,740,416 bytes) (since the current script is a little newer, the ISO size might be a little different from mine there)

you can get that 'Integrate7' script from https://forums.mydigitallife.net/thread ... 023.78722/ ; it requires a account to see the download link and you can see all of what the script does (although I just copied and pasted what the script does in the 'code' below). if you don't want to sign up for a account there I can probably just download the script and temporarily upload it somewhere else for you.

Code: Select all

How to use the script ?

1. Just copy original Windows 7 DVD in .iso format to the same location as Integrate7 script.

Alternatively, you can just copy a contents of your DVD to DVD directory of the script.

2. Run Integrate7 as Administrator (right click, Run as Administrator).

3. Choose image index (or “A” for all images in DVD).

4. Wait, wait, wait.

5. Finally Windows7_<your_architecture>_<you_language>.iso will be created with all updates and fixes included.


What the script does in details ?


1. Looks for .iso image inside main script directory, then it unpacks first found .iso image.

If .iso image is not found, it checks if DVD directory contains already unpacked Windows 7 installation files (especially install.wim and boot.wim files). If yes, it will use it.

2. Checks whether the image is proper Windows 7 image (only single-architecture, single-language images are supported).

3. Asks user to choose image index (you could use eg. Windows 7 Professional only or all images available together).

4. Downloads all Windows 7 updates up to February 2023, including recommended updates, including IE11, NET 4.8, DirectX 9 June 2010, RDP 8.0 server and RDP 8.1 client.

This step is skipped if updates are already downloaded (and are available in hotfixes folder)

5. Slipstream all downloaded updates to your image (including IE11 language pack for language of your image).

6. Applies custom fixes, ie:

- disables Customer Experience Improvement Program and Diagnostics

- disables and removes Telemetry (which is included in February 2023 cumulative update)

- disables and removes Windows Defender (could be switched off)

- disables System Restore (could be switched off)

- disables all logging (could be switched off)

- disables and removes Action Center

- disables Windows Search Indexer

- disables Application Compatibility Assistant (obsolete, since Windows XP era is gone)

- removes some unnecessary scheduled tasks (like scheduled diagnostic or defragmentation)

- disables Meltdown and Spectre hotfixes (to speed up CPU)

- disables autoshare of your disks in local network

- disables autoplay of disks other than CD/DVD (for security)

- re-enables secdrv service (for support for SafeDisk and SecuROM required by some old games)

- re-enables Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Audio Layer-3 Codec Professional (for support high bitrates encoding)

- adds “Computer” icon to Desktop

- replaces default IE11 homepage with blank (about:blank) and search engine with Google

- adds EULA accepted for SysInternal tools (cosmetic)

7. Integrates your drivers (if you provide ones) to install.wim, boot.wim and winRE.wim of your Windows 7 DVD.

8. Repacks/recompresses install.wim and boot.wim images (to save some space).

9. Creates new bootable ISO DVD image (using Microsoft OSCDIMG tool).

What if execution of Integrate7 gets interrupted ?


Just run UnmountCleanUp.cmd. This script will unmounts remnants and removes garbage.


What is NOT included ?

1. Telemetry-only or activation checking updates (I recommend against installing them through WU. Just hide them, when using WU).

2. Packages not included in original Windows 7 installation DVD, like:

- Windows Management Framework 5.1
- Windows Remote Software Administration Tool
- etc.

If You need them, download and install them manually, then use Windows Update.

I did all of that through a virtual machine on Mint running Win10 and used that Integrate7 script from there with the ISO etc.

p.s. some might complain about "disables Meltdown and Spectre hotfixes (to speed up CPU)" claiming it's a security risk. but using Windows 7 online in general probably has some risk. personally I think the risk would be minimal though to where the benefits outweigh the risk especially if you are not really planning on using Win7 online anyways.

[AndyMH]

Unfortunately,i have leagacy BIOS. Would it be a problem while dual booting? Or would it be just as easy ?

It is straightforward with legacy, all you need to remember is that with legacy boot on a drive with a legacy/msdos/mbr partition table there is only room for one bootloader, so the last OS installed overwrites the bootloader for the previous OS. That is one reason for installing win7 first. Grub, the linux bootloader, will find win and give you a menu on boot so you can choose mint or win. Win cannot do that.

The way mint installs with LM21 has changed from previous versions and I'm not sure what it will do installing alongside win on a legacy drive. For this reason I would do a "something else" install - you partition the drive before installation (use gparted) and tell the installer which partitions to use for what.