FOAK: Win7

Purely hypothetically, if someone found a Windows 7 Home Premium OEM DVD
and wanted to try it out, purely for research, on his machine that has
two linux distributions and XP Home already on it;

Would the OEM disk simply reformat the whole disk for itself without
asking (as some previous versions did)? or would he get the chance to
choose which partition it was temporarily installed on?

 

Every version of Windows for as long as I can remember has let you
choose which partition to use, & asked if you want to format it. I
don't know which version you think reformatted a whole disk without
asking, but I suspect you're wrong.

 

It would ask which partition to install itself in, I'm sure,
but I'm also fairly sure it would take over the MBR so you'd have to work
out how to re-install your Linux boot-loader.

--
Ivan Reid, School of Engineering & Design, _____________ CMS Collaboration,
Brunel University. Ivan.Reid@[brunel.ac.uk|cern.ch] Room 40-1-B12, CERN
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KotPT -- "for stupidity above and beyond the call of duty".

 

When I did this it asked where I wanted it putting, then made a folder
called 'Old Windows' or something similar, which had the full contents
of the old windows install on it. I never tried it as a dual-bbot 'cos
W7 just suited me far better and I deleted the old windows folder after
transferring documents etc.

I have no clue what it'd do to a Linux boot sequence though.

 

If you're concerned download VMWare player, it's free and you can create a
vm to run Win 7 in

--
Steve Parry
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www.gwynfryn.co.uk

 

It isn't true.

It's Ebola.

 

Dos 6.22 certainly did that. So did the floppy-disk version of Win95. Not
sure about the CD of Win 95 as my mobo wouldn't boot from a CD-ROM then.
Win NT 3.51 and (I think) 4 did the same. This one my friend (ahem) said
started the installation without asking which partition.

 

No it didn't.

No it didn't.

No they didn't.

 

Nods vigorously to all except the "no experience" claim. TBH, I
don't recall exactly what I did when I put a legit (corporation) copy of
Win7 on the NetBook; I think I probably just said "sod it" and installed
the latest Ubuntu over what had previously been in the Linux partition.

I used to try to have separate partitions for everything, but got
caught out once when a new install of ubuntu wanted a larger /boot
partitiion. So these days I usually just reserve 3 for Linux; a sensibly
sized /, an adequate /swap and the rest for /home. That way you can keep
/home untouched for upgrades or new distros. I've also gone off
dual-boot, I rarely use it.

 

Heh. The crn of Microsoft installations. I'm pretty sure the only
programs that format a disk without asking are called
virusses^H^H^H^Hviriii^H^^H^H malware.

 

The only Windows disk I've seen which don't allow you to chose which
partition to install into are those OEM rescue / re-install disks.

 

That's only the Lazy OEM's as well.... our W7xx recovery media boots
to WinPE and then gives you a multitude of options, inc recovering to
the factory WIM, Clean Install from the DVD, a nice front end gui for
diskpart allowing the customers to go totally partition bonkers, as
well as other useful tools n gubbins.

 

Exactly. That's what my friend has and that was why I asked the question.

 

... and they don't work without some effort on other make computers.

 

Apart from Dell OEM ones (Win XP), which is what I've been running on a
series of non-Dell PCs for years. Sure, it wants to phone home, but it's
just told 'no' right at the start.

 

Interesting to know ..