Dual Booting a PC

Tuur · Oct 18, 2025

With Windows 10 now past it's update life for those of us who haven't gone the extended route, I'm planning to run Linux Mint Cinnamon on my desktop. Current processor won't run Windows 11 (checked, lacks the popcnt instruction set). Could upgrade the processor, but that was half the cost of a new PC for an old system. Nope. Opted for a laptop, which I've been considering for years.

Original plan was to move off pretty much all programs from the desktop and see if I could port the existing install into a virtual machine, and run that under Linux. Then considered a standard dual boot. Have never been keen on two OS on the same hard drive, and back when I used to refurbish discarded machines for my own use, would use a second hard drive for Linux. Thinking about doing this now. A non-SSD hard drive in the 1 TB range is around $40, but the "caddy" and cables bumps it up to $69. Not bad a price, but still don't know.

Anyone else fool with two-drive dual boot systems?

Wookiee · Oct 18, 2025

Yeah, two drives is pretty straight forward, and it's fairly easy with UEFI these days.

If you're going to make any attempts, be sure to backup anything important.

Tuur · Oct 18, 2025

At the moment, files are backed up in two places: An external hard drive and the new lap top. No danger of loosing anything except messing up the MBR. That shouldn't happen, but once did that with a Linux distro that wanted it's very own boot menu. Been years ago, so can't even say which one. Not sure how I'll handle it this time. Before have set up the second drive, disconnected the primary drive, booted to the distro disk (like I said, it's been years), installed Linux to the second drive, then reconnected the primary drive and selected which one I wanted at boot. Maybe that's antiquated and not even done that way anymore.

peaceful-forest · Oct 19, 2025

Which two operating systems are you going to dual boot?

Jerry N. · Oct 20, 2025

I have made a few computers dual-boot, and it is not a problem. Mint Linux is a good choice. However, even with WINE, I have trouble running a CAM program for a CNC. It tends to send the cutter in the wrong direction for a second or two, and the project is ruined. A new CAM program that runs well on Linux is expensive, but I would love to learn of one that isn’t. By the way, you probably can’t dual-boot with Windows 11. I haven’t tried it, but I’m told that Microsoft will delete the Linux partition during updates. Is this true?

Tuur · Oct 20, 2025

Jerry N. said:
I have made a few computers dual-boot, and it is not a problem. Mint Linux is a good choice. However, even with WINE, I have trouble running a CAM program for a CNC. It tends to send the cutter in the wrong direction for a second or two, and the project is ruined. A new CAM program that runs well on Linux is expensive, but I would love to learn of one that isn’t. By the way, you probably can’t dual-boot with Windows 11. I haven’t tried it, but I’m told that Microsoft will delete the Linux partition during updates. Is this true?

A check shows Windows 11 can do that, or at least mess with it. It may be more likely to do a number on GRUB, but GRUB and Windows have never really liked each other much. This will be a Windows 10 / Linux dual boot machine, and might have that tendency, but, having only run dual boot on separate drives, didn't run into that in the Windows XP days.

WINE was always iffy for me. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. One year, when the kids got a game from grandparents, it wouldn't run on our old machine under Windows, but worked perfectly fine on the same machine in Linux under WINE. In those days was tinkering with Debian and Ubuntu, so don't recall which distro it was.

Tuur · Oct 20, 2025

peaceful-forest said:
Which two operating systems are you going to dual boot?

Windows 10 and Linux. Could spend about half the cost for a new PC to upgrade the CPU to maybe run Window 11, but it's already an old machine. Licensing costs for Windows 11 was also a consideration, but Microsoft recently offered that at a heavy discount. Basically, when the upgrades and license cost about as much as a new machine, just go with a new machine. Linux Mint is to keep an updated OS on the machine for as long as possible.

Jerry N. · Oct 20, 2025

Tuur said:
A check shows Windows 11 can do that, or at least mess with it. It may be more likely to do a number on GRUB, but GRUB and Windows have never really liked each other much. This will be a Windows 10 / Linux dual boot machine, and might have that tendency, but, having only run dual boot on separate drives, didn't run into that in the Windows XP days.

WINE was always iffy for me. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. One year, when the kids got a game from grandparents, it wouldn't run on our old machine under Windows, but worked perfectly fine on the same machine in Linux under WINE. In those days was tinkering with Debian and Ubuntu, so don't recall which distro it was.

You are very correct about GRUB and Windows not getting along.

I might be silly, but I liked Windows XP, except for the authorization code problems. Install a new hard drive, and BOOM, you have to call Microsoft and argue with them. Anyhow, I had an XP machine with Puppy Linux. Puppy was great if you didn’t need to do anything but send emails and look at the internet. Fedora was also a nice system.

WINE has the problem that it sometimes partially works.

Tuur · Oct 20, 2025

Puppy Linux was my go-to for backing up data from Windows machines that couldn't boot. Boot to Puppy Linux and transfer files. Then, worst came to worst, we at least had the data.

Jerry N. · Oct 21, 2025

Tuur said:
Puppy Linux was my go-to for backing up data from Windows machines that couldn't boot. Boot to Puppy Linux and transfer files. Then, worst came to worst, we at least had the data.

Good idea.

prodromos · Oct 21, 2025

Tuur said:
WINE was always iffy for me. Sometimes it works; sometimes it doesn't. One year, when the kids got a game from grandparents, it wouldn't run on our old machine under Windows, but worked perfectly fine on the same machine in Linux under WINE. In those days was tinkering with Debian and Ubuntu, so don't recall which distro it was.

Maybe boot Linux and run Windows in a VM

Tuur · Oct 21, 2025

prodromos said:
Maybe boot Linux and run Windows in a VM

That's an option. I run some expensive programs at work that wouldn't run on any Windows above XP, but don't use the programs enough to justify their replacement. Windows 7 had a VM program, but 10 didn't, so made a VirtualBox virtual machine running XP to run those programs. Did the same for some home programs, such as a collection of Atari arcade games ported over to Windows. Note: maybe it's my age, but haven't played those in a long time. That said, just found that AARP has the games playable on their site, so it may not be an age thing.

VM tends to take a performance hit. XP in a VM runs okay at work and home, but at work, when I tried to set up a Windows 7 VM, it crawled. A faster machine might have made that work.

When we had some old DOS programs at work to read and program some older meters, tried to set up VMs for those with varying results, but DosBox, a DOS emulator for PC games, turned out to work the best.

It's possible to create a VM from an existing install, and that was the original plan. Now, not so much.

Note: the OS still has licensing requirements when run in a VM, and yes, have the licensing for the one at work and home.

Tuur · Oct 31, 2025

The last parts came in today, so installed the second HD; booted to Windows 10; configured the new drive (just basically let disk management do its thing and didn't do anything special); shut down the machine; disconnected the Windows drive; booted to a USB with Linux Mint 22.2 Cinnamon; then installed it. Set up Snapshot and did the updates, then shut it down and reconnected the Windows drive. Rebooted, and in the UEFI book selected saw something strange. It had shifted to the Linux drive, but the Windows drive was nowhere to be seen. Went to setup and saw the drive, but couldn't put it in the boot order. Proceeded to Linux, confirmed the drive was visible, and set up grub on the new drive. I intend for Linux to be the first boot. Got Grub set up, rebooted, and lo and behold, the Windows drive is now visible in the UEFI. Went to Windows, looked around, then rebooted. Surprise! The Windows drive was now the first in the list where before it was the Linux drive. Changed the boot order in setup, saved it, and rebooted. Grub came up and gave me the option of Linux Mint, some other Linux Mint options, and Windows. Proceeded to Linux

I had forgotten that Linux does funky things to the time on machines dual booting with Windows. Got that straightened out; rebooted; used Grub to select Windows; corrected the time; then rebooted and chose Linux Mint in Grub. So at least that's taken care of.

Right now I'm in Linux Mint 22.2 Cinnamon. Have some other installs and tweaking to do, but the dual boot aspect is complete.

prodromos · Oct 31, 2025

I'm going to have another attempt at installing Ubuntu sometime soon as I want to set up a Network Video Recorder using Shinobi. I had set it up once before but messed up on the storage allocation, so the video files were being written to the 100MB boot volume and not to the 2TB drive I wanted them on.
It was my first go at installing both Linux and Shinobi in well over a decade, so I was a bit rusty.

Tuur · Oct 31, 2025

Just got the printer going. Painlessly setting up a printer in Linux? Who knew?

Dual Booting a PC

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