Need Expert Advice to enable dual booting(Honeycomp-Win 7)

[ra122]

I spent a week to figure out what the problem but i failed. I managed to install the original image of the viewsonic 2.2 with win 7 as follows:
1- exporting the image to USB drive using Unetbootin
2- Install the image to harddisk (i have 3 part. 2 NTFS(Win7 & recovery part) & one EXT3 format) using the SDA3(EXT3 part) the process completed but the android system couldn't be detected so intall again to SDA2 (NTFS which contains win 7 system) without formatting it
3- Dual boot worked as a charm no problems at all I only need to intsall market so I decided to install the 3.2 system for Tegva2 X86- android iso files
4- I used the same steps that i used to intsall the 2.2 version
5- System boots to android first time no problem
6- try to boot into windows (This is my problem that i need to figure it out) it gave me missing boot but the android is working great without problems
7- to run windows again I have to fix the MBR using windows bootable USB drive but in this case i lose my android system
NB the only way that i got the 2 systems running that i installed the unetbootin with the option intall ISO to harddrive not to usb but in this case wach time i boot into android it makes a fresh install and i can't keep my user data in this case.
So please if any one can support me to enable dual booting using 3.2 & Win7 i really will be appreciated.

 

[waterhead]

The problems that you are having are concerning the Linux bootloader, GRUB (Grand Unified Boot Loader). It is not a problem with grub, just your understanding of what it is and how to have it installed.

When dual booting Windows-Linux/Android you must always install Windows first. Then when you install Android-x86, it will install grub. It will ask where you want to install it, you usually want it on the same drive as your Widows/Android installations. If I recall, this is the next step after choosing the hard drive partitioning. Here you can also select other operating systems to add to the boot list. You may need to click on the dropdown list to see the other detected OSes. Windows will have the boot sequence that looks like this:

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

That is just an example, your (hd0,0) may be different.

If you did install Widows, and then Android-x86, and now you cannot boot Windows. This can be fixed without re-installing anything. You simply need to add it to the proper configuration file in Android. You want to edit the grub.conf file, or the menu.lst file. I don't recall which file Android-x86 uses. It should be found in a /boot/grub/ folder.

Do a search for "Adding Windows to grub" for more detailed information.

 

[RckyBobby]

what he said ^^^ you also want to make sure android is the first partition on your hard drive, it will make
installing/reinstalling windows or android easier. my first partition is 2Gb for android, the rest i have windows 8 installed on and i havent had any problems with grub finding and adding my windows partition when i instal android.

 

[waterhead]

what he said ^^^ you also want to make sure android is the first partition on your hard drive, it will make
installing/reinstalling windows or android easier. my first partition is 2Gb for android, the rest i have windows 8 installed on and i havent had any problems with grub finding and adding my windows partition when i instal android.

I haven't used or installed windows since WinXP, but WinXP had be installed on the first partition of the drive. That is also where the WinXP bootloader was installed. Grub would the overwrite this, and if you uninstalled Linux/Android you would then need to repair the windows MBR.

I'm guessing that Win7 is different.

 

[ra122]

what he said ^^^ you also want to make sure android is the first partition on your hard drive, it will make
installing/reinstalling windows or android easier. my first partition is 2Gb for android, the rest i have windows 8 installed on and i havent had any problems with grub finding and adding my windows partition when i instal android.

Ok I have 3 partition SDA1 200MB SDA2 12GB SDA3 2.2GB I think that SDA1 is assigned by windows for recovery, SDA2 is the windows partition NTFS part. SDA3 I did format it to EXT3 after installing windows on SDA2 then i installed the android on this partition SDA3 but it didn't work then I installed it again on SDA2 it worked fine (I'm talking here about the viewsonic original image)
When I tried to use Fdisk or gparted I failed to repartition my SSD into 2 parts.
Now i just need to figure out how to intall the custom image of the 3.2 without affecting the MBR of my windows
Thanks

 

[waterhead]

You could also install Android to a microSD card. 4GB should be enough, since it originally only needed 2GB. You then could tell it to install the GRUB bootloader to the card. Then go into your tablet BIOS and have the microSD card be the first boot option. Then when you boot it should give you the option of booting either Windows or Android. And your Windows MBR won't be altered.

BTW, I don't believe Windows will run from a SD card. It isn't as flexible as Linux/Android.

 

[RckyBobby]

I haven't used or installed windows since WinXP, but WinXP had be installed on the first partition of the drive. That is also where the WinXP bootloader was installed. Grub would the overwrite this, and if you uninstalled Linux/Android you would then need to repair the windows MBR.

I'm guessing that Win7 is different.

windows 7 doesnt have to be installed on the first partition like winxp did, as long as the mbr is on the same partition as the windows installation you can install android multiple different times on the first patition and it will pick up the windows installation every time. has for me anyways, I have installed android too many times to count ( different builds and versions) and I have never had to reinstall windows.

 

[RckyBobby]

Ok I have 3 partition SDA1 200MB SDA2 12GB SDA3 2.2GB I think that SDA1 is assigned by windows for recovery, SDA2 is the windows partition NTFS part. SDA3 I did format it to EXT3 after installing windows on SDA2 then i installed the android on this partition SDA3 but it didn't work then I installed it again on SDA2 it worked fine (I'm talking here about the viewsonic original image)
When I tried to use Fdisk or gparted I failed to repartition my SSD into 2 parts.
Now i just need to figure out how to intall the custom image of the 3.2 without affecting the MBR of my windows
Thanks

my drive is partitioned as: SDA1=2GB for android, SDA2=200MB used by windows, SDA3=the remaining is for windows 8. viewsonic even says to install android on SDA1.

 

[Daskalos]

You can use a third party boot manager software called "EasyBCD"... Install it on Win7 and create a new boot item (be sure to point it the partition where android was installed). When you restart you'll have the option what OS to boot.

 

[ra122]

Problem solved
I just managed to repartation it again with gpart into 2 partations EXT3/NTFS(The third part made conflict while installing the android) did the normal steps and finally everything got working fine
Thank you all for your support