Windows 8 Upgrade - trying to dual boot with Vista 32 bit

LittleGreyCat

New Member
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Firstly, thanks for all the tutorials - made life relatively straightforward.

Starting point - Windows Vista 32 bit PC and Windows 7 64 bit PC.

Bought an upgrade and downloaded Windows 8 Pro on the 64 bit machine.
Saved the install media to a .iso
Burned a DVD.

Now over to the 32 bit Vista PC.
Bought a shiny new 1TB drive and replaced the old 160GB drive which contained Vista.

Did a clean install of W8 Pro and after a refresh it accepted the product key.

So far so good
[although I have had a minor problem trying to install a 32 bit application which ran O.K. on W7 64 bit but complained it couldn't find libcairo-2.dll in W8 64 bit.]

Anyway, now to go for multiple boots :geek:

Installed Ububtu 12.04 64 bit, which give me the grub2 boot manager.
This installed O.K. and I tried booting bot W8 and Ubuntu and this worked fine.

O.K. - try using grub2 to boot Vista.

Re-fitted the 160 GB drive.
Used Parted Magic CD to set up a new NTFS partition on the end of the disc then invoked Clonezilla to clone the partition from the old drive to new.
Fired up Ubuntu and ran update-grub and now I can see the Vista partition.
However when I tried to boot Vista the system just hung with a blank black screen and a flashing cursor top left.

Further reading suggests that I was over optimistic (it is a long time since I dual booted Windows systems) and that I can't do it the way because to dual boot Windows you need one master Windows system which holds the booting details for all Windows systems to be booted.
[Trying to find the very useful article but can't ATM]

So I seem to be left with a Vista partition that I can't boot.
However as I don't have much invested in the new systems I can easily trash everything and start again.
So:
Will refreshing Windows 8 pick up the fact that there is another partition?
Will re-installing Windows 8 pick up Vista O.K.?
Or will I have to scrub the disc, clone the old disc to new and confirm Vista boots, then install Windows 8 to a partition further down the disk?

One strange thing - when I look at the options for managing the boot menu I see only one OS listed but that is Windows Vista not Windows 8.
When I look at the grub menu it correctly lists Windows 8 and Windows Vista.
Windows 8 boots fine from grub using the Windows 8 option.

So another puzzle - why is it listing the OS as Windows Vista?
The ISO was downloaded and burned under W7 64 bit.
Windows 8 was a clean install on a brand new disc.
Did the attempt to boot Vista write something to the W8 boot area?

Anyway, I'd like to be able to boot Vista for a while until I an happy that I've migrated everything to W8.
W8 seems a lot faster than Vista on the same PC (although I have a newer, more powerful HDD) and is quite useable now I have installed classic menus.
I could put the old drive back and select boot priority in the BIOS to change booting, but I would prefer to have everything on the one disc.

Also, I have plans for the old HDD.:cool:

Cheers

LGC
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    Windows Vista 32 bit
    System Manufacturer/Model
    Dell XPS M1530
    CPU
    Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz
    Memory
    4Gb
    Graphics Card(s)
    NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
    Mouse
    Logitech ball scroll mouse
    Internet Speed
    30 Mb/sec
You can do a clean install, but you need to delete the Windows Vista install.


http://www.eightforums.com/general-discussion/10837-windows-8-eula.html

Microsoft said:
What about upgrading the software? The software covered by this agreement is an upgrade to your existing operating system software, so the upgrade replaces the original software that you are upgrading. You do not retain any rights to the original software after you have upgraded and you may not continue to use it or transfer it in any way. This agreement governs your rights to use the upgrade software and replaces the agreement for the software from which you upgraded. After you complete your upgrade, additional software will be required to playback or record certain types of media, including DVDs.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    ME, XP,Vista,Win7,Win8,Win8.1
    Computer type
    PC/Desktop
    Other Info
    Notebooks x 3

    Desktops x 5

    Towers x 4
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