My experiment in dual booting has concluded. I decided that I prefer to just have Windows on my laptop. Linux worked fine, I had two primary issues, both not serious but annoying. First, having some of my software in linux (Gimp Libreoffice, Scribus, inkscape etc) and others in windows made it difficult to work with. Also and more troublesome is that my laptop HD is small, only 60Gig, which left around 27 gig for each OS. When a drive is that small it gets fragmented really fast and that's what happened to me. i had to defrag it every time I used Windows. Friday night the whole thing wouldn't boot so I took the HD out and plugged it into my IDE/USB adapter and ran it off my main computer. It was 47% fragmented. After defragging it and doing a complete disk check I put it back into my laptop and it worked fine. So I decided to just make the whole thing Windows. I would have made it all Linux but Linux won't play Netflix movies and that's important to us. My wife and I sometimes flop in bed and watch a movie or two.

That is why I virtualize GMS. I can have Ubuntu running at the same time as Windows and share files between the two OSs as needed. Only have occasion to do this though (rare it is). If your MB supports hardware VM acceleration (mine does; most modern MBs do), the VM will run pretty much like it was running natively too. Virtualbox is still free so I actually currently have 3 VMs (Ubuntu, XP and Win98) that I run (XP nearly all the time since it's acting as a buffer between my Win7 and the real world; a sandbox if you will). Run Sandboxie inside my XP VM, so , in essence, I'm double-sandboxed.

I agree with lylejk, but only if your computer has sufficient resources to run a virtual machine without performance issues. In lieu of that, I think your best approach is to use two physical drives in your desktop, one for Windows and one for Linux. You have the option to boot to each OS via your BIOS's boot menu or by using the boot managers in either Linux or Windows. That was my approach when I transitioned from Windows to Linux and it eliminates all the problems with dual booting from a single physical drive.

Of course, this is not possible on many laptops/notebooks which do not have room for a 2nd drive. Although, you always have the option to boot from a USB flash drive. It's easy enough to install Linux on a flash drive.

The goal for me was to abandon Windows altogether, for a range of reasons that go beyond the scope of this thread. People can decide for themselves if they want to continue to support Microsoft's approach to operating systems. I get enough exposure to Windows by clients who pay me to fix the mess they've found themselves in.

My attitude now is that if it can't be done in Linux, I don't need it. I must admit that I still have one hard drive with XP on it that contains all my older multi-track digital recordings under Adobe Audition but that's the last of my Windows' legacy apps. I'm working to replace that now with a dedicated Linux digital music workstation and I'll be finished with Windows once and for all.

Concur with what Tux said. I do have a AM2 processor (Gigabyte MB), and, though it's now a little old, still very adequate especially if you have 6GBytes RAM like I have. I'm hoping to milk my PC for another 2 or 3 years before even thinking about another one. I do have Intel I7 envy (6 core and more virtual cores if I remember corectly; can't even imagine how fast this beast is), but I have what I have and work with what has been given me.

Same here. But my last Windows app is Spider Solitaire. Know a good Linux equivalent? All those I found don't really cut it:)

It's 8 years old. It doesn't have the steam to do anything exciting. it also doesn't have room for a 2nd drive unless i get an external one. Before i did that I'd buy a new computer.

To be honest i don't know how to virtualize it.

A actually ran a VMWare Virtual appliance program (name alludes me now of the actual VMWare program) on my previous PC (which only had 512MBytes of RAM by the way) with no issues on a XP system before I retired it GMS. The Virtual Appliance program was free and there were a lot of cool Appliances (VMs) that were ready to download as I recall. I did not know about Virtualbox (open source) at that time and am sort of glad I didn't since it really wasn't ready for prime time then; now it's much better. The cool thing with Virtualbox is that you can create you own VM unlike VMWare Virtual appliance where you had to download a VM (of course if you are willing to pay for VMWare, you can create you own VM). Still, I wouldn't load Virtualbox on your current system GMS. When you are read to get a newer system, then tell us. A lot of folk here can help you out with that.

This has turned into a mess. When I removed the linux partitioon I had to reinstall windows. For some reason it won't let me install windows. Toshiba has it's own setup CD, first runs the basic reformatting and partition making then reboots to install windows. Now when it restarts it just makes it to the toshiba boot screen and reboots over and over again. I tried everything I could think of everything i could think of but to no avail. I had no choice but to make it completely Linux based. That would be fine except for two things that are VERY important for me that I need that laptop for. One is a prog called esword, which I use more than anything else on all of my computers. I tried to run it via Wine but didn't get it to work. There is a Linux version of it that costs $29. It so important to me that I'd pay the $29 but I couldn't get it to install my additional Esword modules, which are necessary and i paid for all 20+ of them. I have an email to the maker of the linux version , if i et a satisfactory answer I'll buy it and that will be solved.
The next big thing, although it sounds silly is important. We like to flop in bed or sit on the porch and watch movies when both of us are hurting really bad. Netflix won't work on linux, it also requires Silverlight, but there is a Linux silverlight clone called moonlight, which I have installed. If i could fool netflix into thinking it's dealing with windows i might have a chance. Other than those two obstacles, both big problems, I'd be very happy to have the whole thing Linux.
If i ever run across another HD that will fit into it I might try popping it in and seeing if i can put Windows on it again but for now I'm just out of luck. I can look for a Linux equivalent of esword but i don't see much hope for that as nothing I've found is anywhere close to being that good.

I've got a gig and a half of RAM in it, just a small HD. I thought virtual box was made to allow linux apps to run in windows, sort of the counterpart of Wine. It seems that I misunderstood it.

That's a bit odd, Gms9810. What is the model of the Toshiba?

Some systems have a hidden restore or utility partition that can give you problems. I've seen similar behaviour when the boot partition was not set as the "active" partition.

You might want to download something like Free Partition Wizard and explore your drive before/after the restore process.

Yes, Virtualbox is a program that allows you to emulate an OS. You can use almost any OS as host (believe they ported the program to Macs, PCs, as well as Linux, and, I believe Solaris too). The clients can be any OS that can be just about anything (except only a Mac and run a VM {i.e., client} Mac unfortunately. As for your Toshiba issue, as I recall, you should have been given 2 CDs. The one CD just conditions the HD for preparation to use the customized OS CD. It's been over a year since I worked on PCs regularly though. I actually like Toshiba laptops by the way. Since you started the install process, any hidden partition for recovery is probably hosed by the way. I do hope you still have all your CDs that Toshiba gave you.

Strange, I've run dual boot between WinXP and Linux Debian on a 40GB harddrive (20+20 per partition) for many years without noticing any issues (I exclusively run IBM/Lenovo Thinkpads though). I do this with every laptop I buy - since I have a WinXP CD, I also make sure to purge the crappy "boot partitions" that hardware vendors usually put in; they just fill up space for no good reason.
I mean, Windows bogs down and begs for a reainstall after a year or so, but not due to fragmentation but due to it auto-filling up with crap and being Windows ... 47% fragmentation on a newly setup disk is not normal, could it be something with the Windows swap area maybe? Otherwise I'd almost expect a hardware issue (not sure what it would be though).
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Griatch

Maybe so with XP (but not VM; only browse with the XP VM which is probably why; lol), but Win7 has done a pretty good job w.r.t. the OS Griatch. Over a year and a half now and running pretty much flawless. I agree with you about the hidden partitions; unless you don't have all your recovery CDs, I would hose it too. Better yet, build you PC yourself (since 2000, I only either purchase shop built or bare bones for my use).

It only gave me one, which is what I used. I'll try and get to know virtual box, it sounds useful. Not being able to run that one piece of software is very a serious problem for me. If i could fool netflix into think I'm using Windows I might be ok. i tried to installe the windows version of chrome with wine and netflix apparent;y fell for it, but it rquires silverlight and I can't seem ti install that with wine. The Linux silverlight clone (moonlight i think it's called) installed but chrome dosn't see it.

i have an old Satellite A55 but with some extra RAM in it. I might add that it's on the same battery and I can get 2 2 1/2 hours out of it. Not bad for an 8 year old battery.

It seemed a bit high for me too, after i defragged it the next night all i did was typical stuff and it was 12% so i defragged it again, the next night it was i think 15%, all too much for a 24 hour period.

Virtual box is just creates an environment so you can install your own OS GMS (have to have the installer CD or Image though). VB allows you to mount an image so you can do that to install your preferred OS.

When i get paid next week i'm going to see if my local comp sop has a used HD to fit into it. if it does I'll put it in and try a windows install again, if it dosn't i can reformat it and take it back or Ebay it and put my original back in. Nothing will be lost. i have it all set up the way i want and don't want to have to install Linux AGAIN. I'll look into VB though too.