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Noob trying to stay out of trouble

NetWorthy

Mon Jan 20, 2020 11:18:23 pm

As the title indicates, I'm a noob in Linux land but I'm determined to be emancipated from M$! I have a Win 7 notebook and installed Z15.0 Ulti Full as dual-boot to evaluate that system. Then I decided to take a peek at Z15.1 Ulti Lite. I intended to install Lite over the Full, but ended up with 3 OS's on the boot screen: Win 7, Z15.0 Ulti and Z15.1 Ulti Lite. Head scratcher for me but OK for evaluation.

So I've finally decided to go with Z15.1 Ulti Full for my final production system but retain Win 7 for a couple of proprietary apps.

EDIT/UPDATE: I'd prefer to do a clean install of the Z15.1 Ulti Full rather than use the terminal commands to update the Z15.0 in place. I've done a lot of playing around (and probably messing a few things up) on the Z15.0 and just want to start anew with Z15.1..

PLEASE can somebody tell me (or give a link) how to do the install so I only get the original Win 7 and a newly installed Z15.1 Ulti Full? I assume I have to do something to scrub the previous two Z15 installs and consolidate the disk space. And do I have to do something to correct the boot selection menu?

ANY help will be appreciated - thanks!

Swarfendor437

Mon Jan 20, 2020 11:33:17 pm

It's late - will get back to you tomorrow - unless Aravisian beats me to it or one of the other well abled forum crew. ;) :D

mdiemer

Tue Jan 21, 2020 5:48:26 pm

First, make sure you have a disc image of windows in case something goes wrong. You need to delete the partitions you don't want. Since you have windows, you can do that with their disk utility, which you can find on the control panel (or do a search under "disk management"). Highlight the partition/s you don't want and delete them. You will then have some unused space. You can deal with that by enlarging the windows partition to maximum length. You also do this in "disk management." You are now ready to install Zorin . Choose the "install Zorin alongside Windows method." It will create the necessary partitions and install Zorin without touching the Windows partition.

You can also choose the "something else" method, but this involves more expertise. You choose the partition to install to, and mark it as root. Unless you have done this before it can seem tricky. The first method has always worked form me. If something does go wrong, with either method, you have the image of Windows to reinstall and then you can start over.

Swarfendor437

Tue Jan 21, 2020 11:05:25 pm

When it comes to installing Linux alongside Windows 10:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlTgaWs9BD0

This is for Windows 8 but the principles still apply. ;) :D

NetWorthy

Sat Jan 25, 2020 5:40:14 pm

Thank you mdiemer and swarfendor for your replies, both were helpful. I've used the dual boot method in the video on my Win 7 machine and it works very well. I did have one small hiccup on the way to success - like most Win users, I don't have a lot of insight into MBR, boot loaders and such.

I didn't have enough time during the week to interrupt my workflow and babysit the Zorin installation. So I decided to only do the Win Disk Mgmt part and get rid of the unneeded Linux partitions. Everything seemed OK until a software update required a reboot - and then I got a Grub message "unable to find". Apparently, part of what Grub needed was on one of the partitions I deleted! This caused a few skipped heartbeats until I discovered it is rather easy to restore the original Win MBR from a restore / repair disk:
https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/20864-mbr-restore-windows-7-master-boot-record.html

Gparted and a few other pieces didn't look or work exactly like the video, but it was close enough to figure it out.

All is working beautifully so thanks again for the help!

BTW, I'm keeping a log of issues I have to address manually as a Win exile in Linux land. I'll post it here on one of the boards so the good folks at Zorin (or maybe one of you) can maybe come up with some kind of script or guide to ease us noobs through this brave new world we've entered...

Swarfendor437

Sun Jan 26, 2020 2:19:37 pm

Congratulations or getting sorted. Don't forget here is the place to come if you have issues. I can see I'm going to have to get started on the Lite Manual for 15.x at some point! ;) :D