Hi,
I’m in need of a little help. I’m going to purchase a new laptop, pre-installed with Win 7 and I’m expecting to not be provided the Win 7 disk. I’m wanting to install opensuse and have xen run Win 7 as the guest in a virtualized thing.
Question, how do I install opensuse then re install Win 7 without the disk? Do I burn what is on the Win 7 recovery partition or…well help? I’m getting quite lost now.
Thanks in advance!
AFAIK this is not possible. You can’t usually install vendor installed windows in a VM. And a recovery partition is not like a proper install DVD.
I usually get hold of a proper install DVD, but you probably will not have access to that sort of thing. Unless you have a friend with the exact version Eg: Win7 basic sp1 or whatever.
You can actually use their DVD and your product code.
Also: I’d probably favor Virtual Box as a VM too
What is your BIOS type? UEFI?
I have a windows 7 home premium OEM disk from another computer. Would I be able to use this with the new computer product code? That is if it is actually the same windows 7 version.
Difficult to say for sure.
I’m not a windows expert. But have some experience.
Though in my case, I couldn’t give a rats if I have or don’t have windows. I don’t actually use it.It’s only installed for testing multi boot.
All machines that I buy, where windows is pre-installed, I delete it completely.
But then where required, I re-install it using a full DVD. I have access to microsoft tech-net account and can get any version.
I can get a new key or use the one on my machine.
So if I were you, the first thing I would do is make a set of recovery disks. This is different to a recovery partition and a OEM disk, it will restore exactly what you have now, including the recovery partition. You need a few blank dvd’s and lots of time. Then you can try what you like, knowing you can always go back to square one.
I might installing opensuse and try not to erase the windows recovery partition. In that way I may be able to revert back to the original microminded system if needed. Is that correct?
You didn’t answer me about the BIOS
It could be important
You might also want to read this
http://forums.opensuse.org/english/information-new-users/unreviewed-how-faq/450291-install-opensuse-alongside-win7-vista-guide.html#post2257084
On Fri, 02 Mar 2012 08:36:02 +0000, adstaryoung wrote:
> I might installing opensuse and try not to erase the windows recovery
> partition. In that way I may be able to revert back to the original
> microminded system if needed. Is that correct?
What I did with my most recent laptop purchase was shrink the Win7
partition down and install openSUSE, being careful not to erase the two
NTFS partitions (in fact, I used an openSUSE Live USB drive I installed
partimage (I think it was) on and imaged the partitions just to be
“safe”, in case something went wrong).
Often times, the Windows recovery partition will let you create Windows
media + driver discs, but OEM versions that I’ve worked with in the past
tend to only install on the physical hardware, not in a VM.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Administrator
Forum Use Terms & Conditions at http://tinyurl.com/openSUSE-T-C
I think I’ll make the recovery disks from Windows 7 then progress from there.
Also Caf if you are still around, how do answer your question about…What is your BIOS type? UEFI?
What do I need to do to find the answer?
If this machine is new (and not old stock new), it will probably be UEFI BIOS.
Often the tech spec and sales hype will give that detail
And of course, if you enter the BIOS or more correctly UEFI ( Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) you should be able to see.
There is an article about it in the forum
http://forums.opensuse.org/content/102-booting-opensuse-uefi-bios-elilo-grub2-linux-only-multi-booting.html
If you still have that old PC, boot it up with that OEM disk then go here:
13 Free Product Key Finder Programs
This only works if the Windows is running. Get that key!
You’re going to need that key for your new VM, if you don’t have that you’ll go nowhere.
Unless,of course, you pay MSFT for another copy of WIN7.
Why don’t you just backup the whole disk with Clonezilla Live? It will archive only the used space, and further compress the contents, so even a 4–8 GB flash stick would be able to hold the archive (provided that your system is freshly installed, not cluttered by additional software or data).
Having such a copy, you could freely experiment with openSUSE installation either into a separate partition, or dedicating the whole disk to it and then expanding the archive inside a Xen VM (Clonezilla Live works in HVM mode, you should pass-through the USB stick to it). Of course, the latter option requires that you shrink Windows partitions before archiving them — you should do this only after you obtain an original backup copy, so you can quickly revert to factory state if anything goes wrong; remember, the archive size doesn’t depend on partition size, but only on used space and its compressibility, so both archives would have the same size.