Installation of three systems on one computer. Installing multiple operating systems (EasyBCD)

This happens for various reasons: the specifics of the work, the desire to learn new developments and other very diverse options. Therefore, in this article we will talk about how to properly install more than one operating system on a computer.

Perhaps we will consider a couple of the most popular OS bundles. I note right away that I will give only a general description of the installation, without delving into its routine details. So let's go...

Installing Windows XP + Windows 7

To set up such a link operating systems we need special software in the face of EasyBCD. If you just install these two operating systems, then the one that you installed last will boot. This is due to the fact that Windows simply “overwrites” the loaders of all operating systems that peacefully “lived” before it and leaves only one for “myself beloved”. Therefore, to begin with, we download the program Easy BCD (download ) and leave the installer on some neutral file disk, or you can download it after installing one of the versions of Windows. So, let's start installing the first version of Windows (7 or XP, no matter in what order). When the first version of Windows is installed, feel free to install the second. But, install it, preferably on a separate partition. After installing the second Windows OS, we boot and install the previously downloaded EasyBCD program into the system.

The program interface is quite simple and clear. A person who knows the basics of English language can easily deal with this program.

When you start the EasyBCD program, you will see such a window in front of you (Fig. 1):

Fig.1

As you can see we have a bootloader Windows 7, which was determined by default, since this system was installed second and is the current one. Now we need to add a new entry to the bootloader so that when we turn on the computer, we can see the line with Windows XP and, accordingly, can boot from under it. To do this, click on the panel on the left "Add New Entry", then choose in paragraph Type the required operating system (in this case it is Windows XP), and click, already on the right, Add Entry.

Fig.2

Everything, the entry in the bootloader has been added, and when you click on the item View settings, you will see that you already have two entries in the bootloader: Windows 7 and Windows XP. (fig.3)

Fig.3

Now you can safely restart your computer and boot from under the desired operating system.

Alternative when installing Linux + Windows (Xp, 7)

Such a “bundle” is quite common, since many people want to break away from the “windows” and feel the taste of a self-confident “penguin”. With this installation option, you can do without third-party software, and use the standard Linux tools. To do this, we first install Windows, the good old-fashioned way and without any tricks. Then, the turn of Linux comes up, we install it second, again due to the removal of all “foreign” bootloaders by Windows. I want to immediately note the fact that during the Linux installation process, you will be prompted to “use the entire disk”, you do NOT need to do this, unless, of course, your data is dear to you. It is necessary to "bite off" a separate section. After the installation is complete, Linux will create a boot menu where you can select any of the operating systems to boot. But no one deprives you of the right to install these two operating systems using EasyBCD.

Installing Linux + Windows + Win 7 + Other systems

With this option, the most convenient method will be, again, EasyBCD. Only in this case, we need to create an entry in Add New Entry, for each of the operating systems, following the example of creating an entry for Windows XP. On the various tabs of the program, you can proceed to create bootloader entries, for Linux and Mac Os. (Fig. 4). Also, if desired, you can add older Windows operating systems: 95.98, NT, etc.

Fig.4

It often happens that your favorite game or program refuses to run on the installed operating system, and there is no desire to reinstall and work in another. How to be? Can install two operating systems on a PC at the same time and calmly choose which one to download. Novice users may be frightened and refuse this method, however, we assure you that with the right actions, installing several operating systems on one HDD absolutely safe and simple. There are many programs that allow you to choose which system to boot, and with what parameters. You will be able to install Windows XP and Windows Vista on one PC, and enjoy a quiet work in the desired OS.

There are several ways install multiple operating systems on one PC However, they all have their pros and cons. The safest and easiest is to install the OS through a virtual PC emulator (for example VMware Workstation or Virtual PC). However, this method is slower to use and is not suitable for frequent work in the same Vista. The essence of the method is that a special computer emulator program is installed on a PC with an installed operating system, in which another OS is installed. The problem is that all the principles and blocks of a real PC are emulated, thereby giving an extra load on CPU giving him extra work. Using this method to install multiple OSes, you will not be able to enjoy full-fledged games and programs.

In this article, we will look at how to install two or more operating systems on one computer without using virtual machines. To do this, we need a special bootloader utility with which we can set the necessary boot options and select the OS. In principle, you can do without it, but this is not very advisable for novice users, due to the danger of losing information.

So, let's consider what is the complexity of installing several OS on one PC. The fact is that each operating system writes special boot information to the hard disk, which can be lost when installing a second OS on the same computer. Also, system folders and files such as Program Files and Windows in Microsoft Windows operating systems may be lost.

Another nuance is the type of file system. For example, Windows uses the NTFS file system, while Linux uses its own Ext partition format. Therefore, when installing several operating systems on one PC, there may be a problem of accessing hard disk partitions. Therefore, we strongly recommend that novice PC users use a special bootloader, for example Acronis OS Selector.

OS Selector- a long-proven and very reliable OS download manager, so we strongly recommend downloading it before installing several OS.

First of all, we need to partition or partition the hard drive. It is advisable to use a separate partition for each operating system, so we create the required number of partitions and proceed with the installation.

First of all, we need to decide which operating systems we are going to install on the computer and in what order. For example, if you need to install Windows 98 and Windows XP on the same computer, you first need to install Windows 98. After that, put XP in another partition and that's it. If you install the operating systems in reverse order, Windows 98 will overwrite the XP boot area.

1. We install the desired operating system on the PC, install the necessary drivers.

2. Install Acronis OS Selector, using the built-in Setup Wizard.

He is no different from ordinary Masters, so feel free to press Next, accept the license agreement. After installation Acronis OS Se lecturer will prompt you to create a rescue floppy or CD. If possible, make them, because in the event of a problem, they will be needed to restore the boot area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe disk. We restart the computer.

Now, instead of the usual loading of your operating system, the boot manager has loaded Acronis OS Selector. It has a nice graphical interface, so it will be convenient to work with both beginners and experienced PC users. In the main window of the program, you see a list of available operating systems.

3. Now we need to install another operating system and restore the bootloader. Let's assume that we will install Windows 98 (in this order, to show that the XP bootloader will be overwritten and to show how to restore the bootloader Acronis OS Selector.

We do everything as always - we insert the installation disk, install Windows 98, install the drivers.

4. Depending on the bootloader, boot area recovery and OS boot options are restored different ways. In case of Acronis OS Selector 8, the manager's loading is restored automatically, the user only needs to select the desired OS and continue working. Some boot managers need to boot from a special floppy or reinstall the program. If you do not start Acronis OS Selector, but Windows 98 loads immediately, install the program and restart your computer.

With this method, you can install several operating systems on one computer without losing them. This method works for both Windows and Linux systems, so no one is left behind.

Advice! If you are a novice user, we advise you to save all important information on a CD beforehand and make backup necessary files, as incorrect operations may damage them.

For business, educational and other purposes, the user may need to work on different operating systems. If there is only one computer at home, then the installation of two operating systems can be suggested as a solution.

There are two ways to install an additional operating system: using a virtual machine, that is, a program inside which Windows or another OS will be installed, or by installing a full-fledged neighbor operating system.
The disadvantage of the first method is that another one will work inside the running operating system. This results in the consumption random access memory is doubled. The second method has the disadvantage that when you start the computer, you must immediately decide which OS will be launched - either one or the second.

In the article below, we will talk about installing two operating systems in the second way.

Installing two operating systems on a computer

The further procedure assumes that one operating system is already installed on your computer, for example, Windows 10, and with further actions we will install another one next to it. If you do not have any OS yet, you should install the first version of Windows you want.

Stage 1: creating a partition for the second operating system

You should not form a partition from the allocated space, so immediately close the window and proceed to the second or third stage of the procedure.

Stage 2: Prepare bootable media

There is a section, now you need to take care of the presence of a bootable USB flash drive or disk. In our work, we will need the UltraISO program, which you can download from the link below, a USB flash drive (or disk), as well as a Windows distribution kit in ISO format, which can be downloaded both from the official Microsoft website and from third-party resources.

Wait for the program to complete the procedure, after which the program can be closed, and then proceed to the process of installing an additional operating system.

Stage 3: Entering the BIOS and installing a second operating system

After that, every time the computer is turned on or restarted, the operating system selection window will be displayed on the screen. If you do not select anything in it, after a while the operating system will be automatically loaded first in the list.

This story - special case about what jungle of knowledge you have to wade through if you want to freely work with several operating systems on one disk. The facts show that there is no order in this discipline, and new components bring, probably, new problems to the order of installation of operating systems. Perhaps this will give enthusiasts who have not had such experience a general idea that installing an OS will not always be simple and unambiguous. However, there is less drama in this case than in the cases with telecoms, OpSOS, PR and Sberbank. One way or another, but it is solved.

There is no set of instructions on how to do the installation - they are all there, already written and scattered on forums and blogs. By keywords and links you can find everything you need. The bottom line is that there are no clear instructions. There are fundamental rules for the structure of partitions on computer disks, standardized back in the 90s. Depending on the novelty of the BIOS and the system, certain problems will always be introduced into a certain order, and it is important to be able to look for solutions, roughly knowing general position affairs. With this approach, links were given, and most importantly - how fuzzy it all is configured!

It so happened that on a subnotebook Acer Aspire One 756(Sandy Bridge Celeron 887), purchased initially with almost no OS (Linpus installed without X), operating systems were installed (in order of installation):
1) WinXP 32 bit - from an assembly about 720 MB in size;
2) Win7 64 bit - from some assembly about 2 GB in size;
3) Xubuntu 13.04 64 bit - from a fresh 800 MB distribution;

Not all bootable flash drives work

All systems booted from bootable flash drives, and this was a bit of a problem, because not all of them could install. At first, many flash drives during installation caused the laptop to freeze as soon as any key on the keyboard was pressed. Therefore, the first system installed was the one (Win XP), which for some reason was able to boot from a USB flash drive (visible as a USB-CDROM, unlike USB-FDD and USB-HDD on other flash drives). Probably, everything would work from a real USB-CDROM, but buying it for the sake of installing the system is somehow illogical if there are flash drives for this.

A laptop, like every device, has its own characteristics. For example, the memory visible in WinXP was only 2.6 GB, not 3.25 (video memory only occupies 128 GB of RAM, so why the system does not see 3.1 GB is a mystery). In general, Acer has not released drivers for Win XP and Linux for this laptop model - only Win7 and Win8. Drivers were collected in parts as updates were made for the devices included in the computer. The selection of drivers took at least 3 days. As a result, the drivers in WinXP did not know how to do something:
1) never felt a battery drain. Therefore, the computer was blind to the discharge.
2) the sound disappeared when exiting hibernation. Therefore, I had to reboot for sound to appear (perhaps selecting and updating system and sound drivers would correct the situation).
3) the mentioned visible memory is 2.6 GB.
The rest worked: Bluetooth, a well-functioning touchpad with a lot of settings and without failures, WiFi, webcam and microphone, sound, SD reader.

Initially, the laptop had a Linpus system without a graphical shell. The disk was divided in two and WinXP was installed in the older part. The system was installed temporarily because the amount of available memory for a 32-bit OS was initially insufficient for all purposes of application.

Not all Win7/Win8 assemblies are installed

Okay, with the existing assembly of Win8 (Optim, 1.7 GB) it did not work. We try Win 7 x86 Optim of the same author-assembler. Interestingly, the symptoms are the same - hanging up at the end of the download and asking to reinstall. Okay, for this "iron" something important was not preserved in the distribution kit. We take another assembly - the same Optim, but x86 + x64 (and it was necessary to install x64 in the end) - 1.9 GB. This time, for some reason, it was possible to install. In total, one of several compact assemblies worked, but it was not necessary to look for and release a large flash for installation. For a flash, it will be important that the assembly has a system recovery mode - it will help to restore the MBR.

After installation, 80% of the drivers worked, but less than half worked well - the video was recognized as a standard monitor, although it could work at the nominal resolution and low speed. WiFi Atheros caused the biggest problems - only the newest version 10 driver for Win7 x64 came up. Almost all drivers had to be downloaded from the network and installed using both the official support site and some others. In the list of drivers, I had to read which of them work under Win7x64. Sometimes the information was erroneous, and the search for a driver continued. So, in 7 hours we managed to collect and install all the drivers for this OS. The touchpad continued to work very well on this system, which is notoriously rare for touchpads (because of the drivers and their support). Everything in the system began to work absolutely correctly. 6 GB memory is normally readable (2 + 4 sticks, one stick upgraded). Although it is also somehow strange that a lot of it is taken by the system - about 1 GB, not counting the programs visible in the task manager. Perhaps this is how it should be, or perhaps there are hidden costs in excess of video memory, as was observed in WinXP. But there it was very critical, and in x64 - not so much. The memory can be expanded up to 8, and up to 12 GB, and up to 16.

But now, in addition to Win7, which began to see both partitions of the disk, you need to install Linux (Ubuntu) on the remaining free 26 GB. Necessary for specific development tasks, although there are likely to be some driver issues after Win7 works perfectly.

The hardware power of this computer is not great - there is a 2-core Celeron, which in tests shows a performance of about 60% of the power of average normal laptops. It's a subnotebook, so smallness and weight come at a price. It will be possible to catch up with performance due to the SSD, which this subnoobuk requires a low - 7 mm. Therefore, system setups are preliminary and may need to be repeated on an SSD.

Xubuntu 12 with flash was not installed, but Xubuntu.13 - no problem

What we have with Xubuntu:
1) screen brightness control - is displayed, but the brightness is not adjusted.
2) with the pickup of WiFi, power, sound and BlueTooth - order. SD-reader - also automatically mounted.
3) the management of Xfce system settings is much poorer than in Gnome 3 in the standard distribution. You will have to install something for convenience, but these are already details of the system.

Access to 3 OS systems

But after installing a new Linux system on the 2nd partition, this bootloader could not just pick up a freshly created system in the same way. Probably, the point was that the installation process involved the creation of an MBR for Linux with further reinstallation after a reboot, and in the conditions of 3 partitions and 3 systems, it turned out that I demanded a bootloader right away, and even built into EasyBCD. A direct transition to the Linux partition showed that there was no bootloader there. The solution was found from another, unexpected direction. I just started looking for ways to restore Ubuntu. Got the program Boot-Repair to restore Ubuntu boot from Ubuntu Live CD - it came in handy to erase the non-working (for some reason) Grub2 of the installed Linux and put the new Grub on top of all bootloaders.

Now there are 2 bootloaders on the disk, which, of course, is unnecessary. But it's already good that all 3 systems work. Now, having repeated an attempt to install Linux into the EasyBCD bootloader via Grub2, we get a successful boot of this bootloader. Having saved EasyBCD in MBR, we get the desired menu from 3 systems. With 3 systems it is already possible to work independently, see all their files and develop by installing programs.

Results

Why is there no desire to figure it out and make complete instructions, full loaders? There is a suspicion that we have to deal with individual manifestations of bios dampness, which are more common, the cheaper laptop models are. For a good installation, you need to build your own bootloader based on Grub4dos (and these are dozens of commands) and at the same time figure out how to build a Grub2 configuration for Linux - i.e. become a loader specialist, learn 1-2 small specialized languages. Undoubtedly, there are enthusiasts for this case who have gone through and will say that it is simple and interesting. But, unfortunately, it takes a lot of time when the tasks of using systems set their own, completely different tasks, and the resource of time and enthusiasm is limited. It's easier to take and try several well-known installation options and stop at the one that works.

This is a completely normal everyday life for a user who has decided to work with several systems at once. On specialized forums on systems (OsZone, Ru-Board, ...) dozens of pages are devoted to problems and solutions in installing systems. The new hardware, unfortunately, also introduces difficulties in this process. What worked yesterday on desktops for some reason stops working (bios, new solutions, new OS) on some laptops. Some old developments (

Most computers are shipped to users with one operating system, but you can have as many as you like installed on one computer.

Having two OCs installed and choosing between them at startup time is known as the “dual boot” process.

The user is free to choose how to install 2 operating systems on one computer:

• Windows 8.1 along with Windows 7;
• have both Linux and Windows on the same computer;
• install Windows or Linux along with Mac OS X.

How Dual Boot Works

The computer's operating system is usually installed on the internal hard drive. When the computer starts, the BIOS activates the bootloader from the hard disk, and the bootloader is already loading the OC itself.

There is no limit on the number of operating systems, except for the size of the hard drive that is installed - there is no limit on the number of installations. You can place a second hard drive in your computer or install it separately and select it in the BIOS or startup menu.

It's also possible to boot a lite version - such as live Linux or a Win To Go USB drive - from an external drive.

One hard drive is not a problem

Even if you have only one hard drive, no one forbids having multiple operating systems. You can divide it into several sections.

Create one partition for one operating system and another partition for another by dividing the disk between them. In fact, many use multiple partitions. The fact is that you dedicate part of the disk to one OC, and part to another.

How to install 2 OS on one PC: When installing a Linux distribution, the Grub bootloader is usually installed. Grub replaces the default bootloader at startup if Windows has already been installed, allowing you to choose which distribution the user wants to activate.

The latter also has its own loader that can be used to select between different build versions (only works with different versions).

Why is 2 OC required?

Different operating systems have different uses and benefits. Having more than one OC installed allows you to quickly switch between the two and have a choice of the best tool for the job. It also allows you to play around and experiment with various unique features.

For example, you might have both Linux and Windows installed, using Linux for development when you need to use Windows-only software or play a game on a PC.

If you like version 7 but want to try the 8.1 build, you can install 8.1 along with 7 and choose between them at startup, knowing you can always go back to the previous version. If you're using a Mac, you can install Windows along with Mac OS X and boot into it when you need to run its own software.

It is possible to use the virtual machine software instead of a dual boot setup, but the latter allows both operating systems to be used on the hardware at full speed.

You won't have to deal with virtual machine costs, which is especially bad when it comes to 3D graphics. The disadvantage is that you can only use one of the installed distributions at a time.

Switching between OCs

If each OC is installed on a separate drive, you can switch between them by choosing a different one as the boot device each time you turn it on.

Switch between installed operating systems by restarting the computer and selecting the installed version that the user wants to use. If you have more than one installed, you should see a menu when you start your computer. This menu is usually configured when installing an additional OC.

Dual boot setup

This setup process is quite simple. Here short review what to expect:

If your laptop has a DVD drive, it's easy enough to burn the ISO file to a CD or DVD. However, many computers no longer have optical drives, and many users no longer have blank DVDs.

The vast majority of installations will require a boot disk or flash drive. With the help of many utilities that are on the Internet (for example, UltraISo or Rufus), create an image.

Restart your computer and at the time of loading go into the BIOS. Select the priority of installation from a flash drive and follow the instructions offered by the built-in manual.

Do not forget that Windows and Linux have different architectures, which means that files between them will not be able to communicate with each other. Also, if you cannot share program installations, you will need to install programs in both versions of Windows, so that the correct information is written to the registry for each separately, even if you share program data.

Windows and Linux: Install Windows first if your computer does not have an operating system installed. Create a Linux installation media, load it into the installer and select the option to install Linux along with Windows.

Windows and other similar system: Shrink the current partition from the inside and create a new partition for a different version. Download another Windows Installer and select the partition you created.

Linux and other Linux: You should be able to dual boot two distributions by first installing one and then installing the other. Choose to install the new system along with the old one. Resize old partitions in the installer and create new ones to free up space if the installer doesn't do it automatically.

Mac OS X and Windows: The Boot Camp utility included with Mac OS X makes it easy to set up a dual boot "windows" system on your Mac.

Mac OS X and Linux: Boot Camp doesn't allow you to set up a dual-boot Linux system, so you'll need to do a bit more work. For complete installation information, please visit the official Ubuntu website in the detailed manual.