Upgrading Windows on a Linux laptop

[Timothy Murphy]

I rarely use Windows on my dual-boot Fedora-20/KDE laptop,
but I'd like to update Windows XP to Windows 7 now.

I found when I did this on a CentOS machine
I was unable to get back to Linux,
and had to re-install CentOS.
I don't understand why, as I had saved and re-installed the MBR.

Am I wrong in thinking that this should be sufficient?
If not, what else do I need to save?

I don't intend to make any partition changes.

All suggestions and advice gratefully received.

[fedora]

Ever considered to install W XP as a VM on linux?
I was successful with both of them (XP and 7) installed on VirtualBox in 
Linux.

suomi

On 2014-05-11 17:14, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> I rarely use Windows on my dual-boot Fedora-20/KDE laptop,
> but I'd like to update Windows XP to Windows 7 now.
>
> I found when I did this on a CentOS machine
> I was unable to get back to Linux,
> and had to re-install CentOS.
> I don't understand why, as I had saved and re-installed the MBR.
>
> Am I wrong in thinking that this should be sufficient?
> If not, what else do I need to save?
>
> I don't intend to make any partition changes.
>
> All suggestions and advice gratefully received.

[Michael D. Setzer II]

On 11 May 2014 at 16:14, Timothy Murphy wrote:

To:             	[e-mail]
From:           	Timothy Murphy 
Subject:        	Upgrading Windows on a Linux laptop
Date sent:      	Sun, 11 May 2014 16:14:39 +0100
Organization:   	Trinity College Dublin
Send reply to:  	[e-mail],
    Community support for Fedora users 
> I rarely use Windows on my dual-boot Fedora-20/KDE laptop,
> but I'd like to update Windows XP to Windows 7 now.
>
> I found when I did this on a CentOS machine
> I was unable to get back to Linux,
> and had to re-install CentOS.
> I don't understand why, as I had saved and re-installed the MBR.
>
> Am I wrong in thinking that this should be sufficient?
> If not, what else do I need to save?
>
> I don't intend to make any partition changes.
>
> All suggestions and advice gratefully received.

The MBR isn't all of the boot process anymore, generally additional code is in 
the sectors after the first sector. I have a disk imaging project, and gone to 
having it save a lot more than 1 sector with the MBR backup process. 
Generally, the first partition starts at 1M instead of the second track.

Know that grub2 puts some extra code after the MBR and assume that 7 and 
above also do.
> -- 
> Timothy Murphy  
> e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
> School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
>
> -- 
> users mailing list
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[Klaus-Peter Schrage]

Am 11.05.2014 17:14, schrieb Timothy Murphy:
> I rarely use Windows on my dual-boot Fedora-20/KDE laptop,
> but I'd like to update Windows XP to Windows 7 now.
>
> I found when I did this on a CentOS machine
> I was unable to get back to Linux,
> and had to re-install CentOS.
> I don't understand why, as I had saved and re-installed the MBR.
>
> Am I wrong in thinking that this should be sufficient?
> If not, what else do I need to save?
>
> I don't intend to make any partition changes.
>
> All suggestions and advice gratefully received.

When I had this problem recently reinstalling grub2 from a live linux cd 
did the trick, see also:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GRUB_2#Updating_GRUB_2_configuration_on_BIOS_s...

[Timothy Murphy]

Klaus-Peter Schrage wrote:

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GRUB_2#Updating_GRUB_2_configuration_on_BIOS_s...

I'm not sure if I completely understood the advice in this URL,
or rather you would apply it, as you say, with a Live CD.

As I understand it, I boot my Live Fedora USB stick,
open a terminal window and type
  grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

I presume this is after mounting the /boot partition on my machine,
so perhaps this should be (?)
  grub2-mkconfig -o /mnt/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Then I say
  grub2-install /dev/sda
or should this be
  grub2-install --directory=/mnt /dev/sda
?

[Doug]

On 05/11/2014 11:19 AM, fedora wrote:
> Ever considered to install W XP as a VM on linux?
> I was successful with both of them (XP and 7) installed on VirtualBox 
> in Linux.
>
> suomi
>
> On 2014-05-11 17:14, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> > I rarely use Windows on my dual-boot Fedora-20/KDE laptop,
> > but I'd like to update Windows XP to Windows 7 now.
> >
> > I found when I did this on a CentOS machine
> > I was unable to get back to Linux,
> > and had to re-install CentOS.
> > I don't understand why, as I had saved and re-installed the MBR.
> >
> > Am I wrong in thinking that this should be sufficient?
> > If not, what else do I need to save?
> >
> > I don't intend to make any partition changes.
> >
> > All suggestions and advice gratefully received.

I hope this is not considered hijacking the thread, but, a couple of 
questions:

1. Where can I find instructions on how to do this?
2. If I do, is XP still subject to viruses like it was when it stood alone?
     2a: If so, can Windows malware-killers be downloaded and used?
3. Can this XP-on-VM still access the internet, for Google and downloads?
     (i.e., see q. 2a.)
4. If you download a Windows program from XP-on-VM, how do you run it?

Been around Linux for some time, but never tried any VM except dosbox,
which was a hassle.

--doug

[Chris Murphy]

On May 11, 2014, at 9:14 AM, Timothy Murphy  wrote:
> I rarely use Windows on my dual-boot Fedora-20/KDE laptop,
> but I'd like to update Windows XP to Windows 7 now.
>
> I found when I did this on a CentOS machine
> I was unable to get back to Linux,
> and had to re-install CentOS.
> I don't understand why, as I had saved and re-installed the MBR.

You saved and reinstalled it how? It should just be grub-install <dev> or grub2-install <dev> (CentOS and Fedora respectively).
> Am I wrong in thinking that this should be sufficient?
> If not, what else do I need to save?

Windows 7 will step on the first 440 bytes of the MBR with its own boot strap code, so Windows will boot but GRUB will not load and thus you don't be able to get to Linux. So you need to have a Fedora 20 install disk handy. The easiest is either netinstall or DVD, because they have an anaconda rescue boot option under the troubleshooting menu. This rescue boot is nice because it finds the Linux system, and mounts all of its parts correctly at /mnt/sysimage. So all you have to do is:

chroot /mnt/sysimage
grub2-install --no-floppy /dev/sda

--no-floppy will go faster and it also avoids baking in a floppy driver into core.img allowing it to be smaller.

If you use a Live CD/DVD, then you have to find and mount all the parts of your Linux installation correctly, including bind mounting proc and dev, and maybe sys and run also, for the benefit of grub2-install.

Chris Murphy

[Tim]

On Sun, 2014-05-11 at 19:36 -0400, Doug wrote:
> If I do, is XP still subject to viruses like it was when it stood
>
> alone?

Yes, it would be.  The virtual machine acts as a "virtual machine."  It
emulates an actual machine as much as is possible.  So what runs, runs,
including malware.  You can install to it, etc.  Which should answer
this question:
>  2a: If so, can Windows malware-killers be downloaded and used?

An advantage (just one of many), to using virtual machines is that you
could set up a virtual machine, and make several copies of the image it
uses.  You use only one of them.  If it gets stuffed, you simply dump
the damage one, and copy one of your unadulterated back-ups into place.
Giving you a very rapid recovery method, so long as you didn't care
about keeping any contents you'd saved between the initial creation of
the image, and when you stuffed one up.

I would not use XP on the wild internet, any more.  The risk is strong,
and no real solutions will be around.  A *disconnected* XP box in an
office that's used as a standalone computer, can keep on running until
the machine fails due to old age.  It'll have the same faults it always
had, but couldn't be exploited remotely.  And I do mean disconnected, an
XP box on a LAN that isn't being actively used with the internet is
still exploitable.

[Doug]

On 05/11/2014 09:24 PM, Tim wrote:
> On Sun, 2014-05-11 at 19:36 -0400, Doug wrote:
> > If I do, is XP still subject to viruses like it was when it stood
> >
> > alone?
>
> Yes, it would be.  The virtual machine acts as a "virtual machine."  It
> emulates an actual machine as much as is possible.  So what runs, runs,
> including malware.  You can install to it, etc.  Which should answer
> this question:
> >   2a: If so, can Windows malware-killers be downloaded and used?
>
> An advantage (just one of many), to using virtual machines is that you
> could set up a virtual machine, and make several copies of the image it
> uses.  You use only one of them.  If it gets stuffed, you simply dump
> the damage one, and copy one of your unadulterated back-ups into place.
> Giving you a very rapid recovery method, so long as you didn't care
> about keeping any contents you'd saved between the initial creation of
> the image, and when you stuffed one up.
>
> I would not use XP on the wild internet, any more.  The risk is strong,
> and no real solutions will be around.  A *disconnected* XP box in an
> office that's used as a standalone computer, can keep on running until
> the machine fails due to old age.  It'll have the same faults it always
> had, but couldn't be exploited remotely.  And I do mean disconnected, an
> XP box on a LAN that isn't being actively used with the internet is
> still exploitable.

Thanx for the information. I was hoping to salvage a Windows
version for a machine that is just too slow for Windows 7, but
runs Linux fine, and ran XP fine until XP was effectively killed.
There are still a number of apps that only run on Windows.
One of them is sdr#, which theoretically runs on Linux, but only \
if you're a guru.

--doug

[Klaus-Peter Schrage]

Am 11.05.2014 23:52, schrieb Timothy Murphy:
> Klaus-Peter Schrage wrote:
>
> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/GRUB_2#Updating_GRUB_2_configuration_on_BIOS_s...
>
> I'm not sure if I completely understood the advice in this URL,
> or rather you would apply it, as you say, with a Live CD.
>
> As I understand it, I boot my Live Fedora USB stick,
> open a terminal window and type
>    grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
>
> I presume this is after mounting the /boot partition on my machine,
> so perhaps this should be (?)
>    grub2-mkconfig -o /mnt/boot/grub2/grub.cfg
>
> Then I say
>    grub2-install /dev/sda
> or should this be
>    grub2-install --directory=/mnt /dev/sda
> ?

Sorry for having been a bit unspecific.
So I try to recall what I did after an installation of Windows 7 to the 
place (/dev/sda1) where XP had resided before (you can't upgrade from XP 
to 7, it has to be a fresh install).
This installation resulted in a loss of the grub2 boot menue, because 
the windows installer had overritten the mbr. So:
1. Booted from a Fedora Live medium (in fact, a USB stick)
2. Chose "Troubleshooting", went directly to a console (not mounting
    anything on /mnt/sysimage, no chrooting)
3. As I had a seperate boot-partition on /dev/sda2, I gave:
    mount /dev/sda2 /boot
4. 	grub2-install /dev/sda
    (I didn't do grub2-mkconfig at this stage, that would not work
    properly, because the config files in /etc were not available).
5. Reboot

This gave me back the grub2 prompt with the option to boot into Fedora. 
I don't remember, if there was the an entry to boot into win7 ('Windows 
7 (loader) (on /dev/sda1)', probably not, but now, from a running Fedora 
system, you can update the grub2 configuration by:
    grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

HTH

[Steven Rosenberg]

On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 8:19 AM, fedora  wrote:
> Ever considered to install W XP as a VM on linux?
> I was successful with both of them (XP and 7) installed on VirtualBox in
> Linux.

This sounds like the best solution.

--
Steven Rosenberg
http://stevenrosenberg.net/blog
http://blogs.dailynews.com/click

[Doug]

On 05/14/2014 06:41 PM, Steven Rosenberg wrote:
> On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 8:19 AM, fedora <[e-mail] 
> > wrote:
> Ever considered to install W XP as a VM on linux?
> I was successful with both of them (XP and 7) installed on
> VirtualBox in Linux.
>
>
> This sounds like the best solution.

I asked and found that XP will still have the same vulnerability on a VM 
as if
it were installed to its own partition. I came to the conclusion that if 
a given
machine simply cannot run Win 7 because it's too slow, that it would be
necessary to obtain a better machine, OR only use XP with no internet
connection. This is possible if you dual boot with a Linux system. You can
access the 'net via Linux, and transfer any needed download to XP from
the Linux partition. A bit clumsy, but virus-free.
(I don't actually know how to make sure that nothing can get thru the
ethernet port to XP. I don't believe it's possible to remove Internet 
Explorer, and
I don't know if it's still vulnerable if you never access it.)
Of course, the other answer is not to have an ethernet connection at 
all, and to
move all files to XP via USB sneakernet.

--doug

[Sudhir Khanger]

Sudhir Khanger,
http://sudhirkhanger.com
https://github.com/donniezazen
On May 15, 2014 4:53 AM, "Doug"  wrote:
> On 05/14/2014 06:41 PM, Steven Rosenberg wrote:
> > On Sun, May 11, 2014 at 8:19 AM, fedora  wrote:
> > > Ever considered to install W XP as a VM on linux?
> > > I was successful with both of them (XP and 7) installed on VirtualBox

in Linux.
> > This sounds like the best solution.
>
> I asked and found that XP will still have the same vulnerability on a VM

as if
> it were installed to its own partition. I came to the conclusion that if

a given
> machine simply cannot run Win 7 because it's too slow, that it would be
> necessary to obtain a better machine, OR only use XP with no internet
> connection. This is possible if you dual boot with a Linux system. You can
> access the 'net via Linux, and transfer any needed download to XP from
> the Linux partition. A bit clumsy, but virus-free.
> (I don't actually know how to make sure that nothing can get thru the
> ethernet port to XP. I don't believe it's possible to remove Internet

Explorer, and
> I don't know if it's still vulnerable if you never access it.)
> Of course, the other answer is not to have an ethernet connection at all,

and to
> move all files to XP via USB sneakernet.
>
> --doug
>
> --
> users mailing list
> [e-mail]
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It depends on what you plan to use it for. I have to run something on an
older version of Visual Studio. Window XP is obviously faster than Windows
7 or 8. So I only run VS on XP VM. No internet explorer or no other
software on XP for that matter. I use a shared folder and might consider
disconnecting from internet altogether. I think that's way more convenient
and relatively safer from dedicated Windows install.