After it happened several times that e.g. I had to solve a problem on my PC
and later, when it occured again, I did not remember how I did it the last,
I decided to write something like my personal Wikis. All information of course without any warranty ;).
Installation of a Dual Boot System with Linux and Windows Vista
The task was to install a dual boot system with Linux and Windows Vista.
The situation was that my new PC came with Windows Vista pre-installed and I wanted
to install
Scientific Linux 4.4 in addition.
I got it working with the help of
this and
this link.
However, in the following I will describe it more precisely step-by-step what I did, then it is explained on these
webpages:
- Reduce size of the Vista partition: On the new PC of course all available disk space was reserved for Vista, so
that the first problem was to free enough disk space for the Linux installation without making necessary a
re-installation of Vista. I must admit the new Windows is quite comfortable in this point. There are two possibilties:
One via "Start Menu -> Control Panel -> System and Maintenance -> Administrative Tools -> Computer Management ->
Disk Management". Just right click on the partition you want to change. In the menu coming up, you will have the option
"Shrink" to reduce the size of the partition and "Extend" to increase the size if some disk space is not allocated to
any partition. The second possibility is to use the command line program "diskpart". Start the Windows command line
prompt as Administrator (right click on the "command line" program and select "Start as Administrator" in the menu).
With "diskpart -help" you get all information to which are necessary for the resizing of the partition. I took the
second way just because the my Vista is in Spanish and I did not find the first possibility.
- Installation of Linux: Take your Linux DVD and start the installation as normal. The only really important point
during the Linux installation is that you change the default settings for the GRUB boot loader. At least for
Scientific Linux 4.4 the default location for the installation of GRUB is the MBR,
but if you install it there, you will not be able to
start Windows Vista again! Therefore, you have to ensure that GRUB is installed on the Linux partition.
In the case of SL I could change it via a click in the "Advanced options" during the GRUB installation.
- Creating a Boot File: After the installation and the restart of the computer, you will not have the
option to start your new Linux system, since Vista just does not know that there is a second OS installed. To change
this I started Linux with the installation CD in the "rescue" mode. Then I checked with "fdisk -l"
on which device my Linux system is installed (e.g. /dev/sdb1) and typed
"dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=xboot.bin bs=512 count=1". The GRUB boot information are stored in the file xboot.bin which
one has to copy to the Windows system directory. I used a memory stick for this ("fdisk -l" also gives
you which device the memory stick is; quite useful if you have a lof of devices on your PC).
- Vista Bootmanager: After you copied the file xboot.bin in the system directory of your Vista installation, you
have to tell the Windows bootmanager about it. For this one has again to start the "command line" program as
administrator and then type:
- bcdedit /create /d "Linux" /application BOOTSECTOR
- bcdedit /set {ID} device boot (where ID is a very long number which you will get after the first command)
- bcdedit /set {ID} PATH \xboot.bin
- bcdedit /displayorder {ID} /addlast (I did not try but probably you can also use "/addfirst")
- bcdedit /timeout 5 (time in seconds before the default OS is started)
After a restart of the computer you will have the option to chose to boot either Windows Vista or Linux.
Ethernet Card with Intel 82562V Chipset under Linux
Although the Intel 82562V does not seem to be an usual chipset for ethernet cards, the card was unfortunately not
recognized automatically during installation and no compatible driver was available. Searching the Intel webpage
for a driver for the 82562V chipset let me end on this
site, leaving me
in the belief that I just would have to download this file, to copy it to Linux, to compile it and after
adding the line
"alias eth0 e100" to /etc/modprobe.conf everything would work fine.
Unfortunately this was of course not the case. I just got the error message
"device eth0 not found".
However, after searching for some hours in various forums, I found that for the chipset 82562
V not the
driver
"e100" is needed but the
"e1000" driver which can be found
here. After unpacking, compiling/installing
(just with typing
"make install") and adding the line
"alias eth0 e1000" to /etc/modprobe.conf
I was able to get a internet connection without any problem! The disadvantage is that one has to re-compile
the module everytime the kernel is updated, otherwise the ethernet card will not work.
Recovering of an external Hard Disk
I do not know how it happened, but after plugging my external hard disk in my laptop Windows XP just told me that
this disk seems not to be formatted. Plugging it again into my PC gave the same result. Not very happy, but accepting
the unavoidable, as I thought, I was going to format the disk and planing to be more carful the next time.
However, both XP and Vista only offered me to format the hard disk (250 Gb) as NTFS, which might be a nice
file system but unfortunately it is not good if you also want to use the disk from Linux. Searching a bit in the
web let me find the tool
"h2format" with
which one can format even large disks in the FAT format. However, starting the program I got the message that it
is only possible to format empty disks from which I concluded that there is still hope. And really, searching a bit more
I found a really great program called
testdisk
which works on several OS (e.g. Windows, Linux, Mac OS). Starting the program from the command line with the option
"testdisk -help" gave all relevant information for the use. I just typed afterwards
"testdisk e:",
where
"e:" was the drive letter of the external hard disk and followed the instructions.
After checking the disk, what took around 30 min, I had the option to ask for the repairing of the
"fstab"
of the disk. Afterwards the disk was again recognized by Windows and Linux and it was possible to
access the data.
Color corruption in the Photo Gallery of Windows Vista
After I bought a DELL E520 computer which was delivered with pre-installed Vista, I had to discover
that my photos showed a yellowness when I opened them in the Photo Gallery of Vista. As long as I
only looked at the thumbnails of the photos it was fine. In fact not only the photos showed a yellowness
but the whole window of the Photo Gallery had a slight yellow tone and my first guess was that this was
shining through my photos causing this strange effect. Other programs did show this effect.
Since I was one of the first unlucky guys,
who got Vista, I did not find anything at the beginning about this and just hoped that this "bug"
would disappear after a one of the regular Windows patches. Of course this never happened.
However, after a few months I got Photoshop Elements and also there the colors of my photos looked strange.
Not so yellow as in the Photo Gallery but for example the blue sky was more white than blue. After starting
a new internet research on this I found the requiered hint (
here). It seems that for some monitors like the DELL Ultrasharp, which I have, but also for some
Samsung monitors the installed ICC profile is not working properly.
To fix the problem I did the following:
1) I went to the "Control Panel" and then on "Personalizacion" (I have a Spanish Vista). In the
following menu I clicked on "Configuracion de pantalla" (Monitor configuration) and on the
opening window on "Advanced Options". The fourth tab of this contains the "Color management" where
one can administrate color issues. On the next window I first switched the device to "Monitor",
checked the box "Use my own configuration" and removed the default profile from the list.
In contrast to the suggestion in the above mentioned link, I added the profile "Adobe RGB"
for the monitor. As a consequence the colors were correctly represented in the Photo Gallery and
also in Photoshop Elements without any reboot.
PS: I found also a small but brilliant program when I was researching for this color problem.
In priniciple I read that it is quite difficult to get something like a calibration for a
LCD monitor, but
here a freeware program was suggested. It is called
Monitor Calibration Wizard and after I tested it, I must say it is really good.
There might be better programs on the market, but I am just happy that the blue sky in my photos
now look like I had it in mind.
Network Interruption under Vista
Another problem I observed when working under Vista was that I lost my internet connection
quite often. Under Windows XP with another computer or even under Scientific Linux on the same
PC I never had this problem. Really annoying was that very often a simple restart of the
network was not enough but I had to repeat this procedure several times before everything
worked again for a while. Stranger was even that sometimes only the connection for
the browsers (Firefox and IE7) did not work, but Windows updates or the download of virus
definitions seemed to be possible. Once I even could not access anymore a webpage on
the localhost (on my PC).
However, I discovered accidentally that it runs at least much, much more stable
when I switched off Skype. On the forum of Skype this behavior was already reported,
although some deny that this was caused by Skype. Well, fact is that Skype is
still not approved for Windows Vista although it seems to run. If anybody observed
the same behavior I would be happy about some feedback.