Dual boot Win/Linux accessing one from the other??

Hi everyone;

I'm considering start using Linux because I want to explore that "new" (new for me of course ) realm. I know nothing about Linux world. I want to dual boot Windows 7/Linux Mint 13 (w/ Cinnamon). I was able to run it live via usb in an old desktop I have in my office.

Now the real question is: With dual boot, can I access and use the physically installed Windows (and its programs) while I'm on Linux Mint? Just like Parallels + Boot Camp works with Mac/Windows. I will like to be able to use some programs (Matlab, Adobe, Eng. software, etc) without the need to boot on Windows.

Other question: In my old desktop I have my drive already partitioned. Do I need to do a fresh install of Windows anyway? Does the GRUB thing may still cause any damage?

I hate to do backups

If this is possible my future plan is to do this with my Lenovo Y580.

Thanks in advance... Sorry if this has been asked already... I couldn't find any answer.

 

The answer is pretty much no. Linux understands NTFS and will be able to read and write to the Windows partition, but Linux can't use exe's for binaries. You might be able to virtualize somehow, but natively no.

GRBU's pretty smart so you shouldn't need to do a fresh install.

 

Thanks for the answer. Its a bummer though .

What does this mean?

Please can you explain me like a 1st grader kid.

If I use VMware or VirtualBox, I can open Windows (virtually) from Linux and use Windows programs. Am I right? If so, is there any software that allows me to do this with the Windows partition?

Like I said, Parallels + Boot Camp allow me to access Windows partition from the Mac OS and use Windows programs.

Sorry, I know is basically the same question asked in a different way .

Thanks for your time.

 

All I meant was that you can't run windows programs natively in linux. You'd have to do virtualization like you suggested.

You should easily be able to virtualize a Windows session. However as for virtualizing an existing Windows partition... I don't know. I don't know too much about virtualization but from I've read it should be possible, though it's not easy. There's nothing simple like Parallels.

 

Use VMWare Player:

https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/free#desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_player/4_0

 

I believe this is may be what you are looking for:

https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=1272

I have do this once but it is very risky and takes alot of trial and error and if you have the disk space it is just easier to virtualise another version of windows and set up a file share between them.

 

Thanks for the link . Can you tell me a little bit of your experience doing this? Why is it risky?

I read the post in the link, which has another lint to the VMware Workstation support webpage. But right now this a high level topic for me to understand completely.

Also the post is from 2007, so I don't know how much this has changed, and the link to VMware workstation is for version 4.5 and right know the lasted version is 8.0.4 lol.

 

If I remember correctly the issue is that if you virtually boot into the system you are virtualizing from with in you can get an error where the same piece of data is being written to twice and then you will corrupt the system. There is a way to get round this but I can't remember that at the minute and I'm not sure it's 100% failsafe.

I don't think the method has changed to much but I haven't looked to recently but I have used this method more recently than 2007. But it may be worth looking into, some one may have made a gui by know to make the process easier.

Hopefully I have pointed you in the right direction, if you find anything or need a hand, drop us a message

 

GRUB2 does not do any damage - Linux Mint will add a boot menu entry for Linux & Windows. As long as Windows is already installed before you install Linux you will not have any problems setting up the dual boot (GRUB2 detects Windows partitions automatically).

For the odd application which will not run in WINE (check the App Database) - or does not have an alternative Linux application, - I run a Windows XP Virtual Machine in KVM (as KVM has much better performance than VirtualBox).

I only boot into Windows for games but soon this will not be necessary with " VGA Passthrough on XEN" achieving near native graphics performance in a Windows VM. AMD hardware is better for this, the MSI GX60 may support it as the CPU / Chipset / discrete card are all AMD.

 

Many windows applications will run fine under Wine in linux.

 

I think that you can virtualize the Windows partition as long as it is not mounted in your filesystem (hence the written twice part). But I am not certain. I know that it is possible, but I have never seen the need. Dual boot is way easy though. Just install Windows first since it is the far more "sensitive" operating system. If you f* up Linux, you can nearly always recover it with a chroot. Windows it seems you have to rely on the "repair Windows" part of the installer, which I have never actually had work for me. FWIW, I use windows on UEFI and Arch Linux on legacy bios, because I had my Arch set up way before Windows came back onto my machine. They do not confict with each other, so long as you use GPT for both. Though I have them on two separate drives, which makes it even easier.

 

Hi thanks for your comment. What do you mean by GPT?

 

GUID Partition Table

 

Virtualizing the Windows partition invites driver troubles.... As far as I know VMWare uses an old 440BX or an i915 motherboard drivers for hardware emulation. If you boot your windows partition natively - it needs the exact drivers for your hardware.

Imagine what kind of issues you'd run into if you take a hard drive with Windows - run it on some fairly recent machine. Then merely switch the hard drive to a 5 or 6 yr old machine. And again bring it back to the other machine

Linux has equivalent of most day-to-day software you'd want to run. For those that are built on top of .NET framework - many of them run as such if you use MONO. There is also WINE - but most programs would run very slowly with WINE as far as I know. (I still use one such program called Source Insight).