[LIVE] How do I dual boot windows 7 with xmbc live?

Hannes The Hun Wrote:the XBMC installer (grub) does that for you, just go ahead

I tried that and XBMC was installed in the hard drive. I even got the option of installing the system in the first half (beginning) of the drive. But there's no operating system option during startup. It just goes right into XBMC.

I just cant seen ANY option for "guided install"

all XBMC gives me is "Erase drive" or not install...annoying, no partition options and i dont want to risk it and continue with erase drive in case it does literally erase the whole drive

Select the last option, it will give you choice later to repartition ( if needed)

Marcos Wrote:I just cant seen ANY option for "guided install"

all XBMC gives me is "Erase drive" or not install...annoying, no partition options and i dont want to risk it and continue with erase drive in case it does literally erase the whole drive

You have that option. If I remeber well.... you have to select the drive that you want to partition and then select manual. after that you'll be able to select the free space for your xbmc install. The only problem is that theres no OS boot option during startup.

lifeisfun Wrote:Select the last option, it will give you choice later to repartition ( if needed)

Ok so just to confirm, i follow these steps:

Boot into USB XBMC Live installer

Select "Install to XBMC to disk (HDD or USB)"

Press a key to continue...ok

Choose disk to use (Gives me only one choice, /dev/sda (156290), which is the full capacity of the internal HDD that has a 130GB NTFS XP partition on it that i want to keep.

Do you want the installer to handle it as a removable disk instead - Yes/No does this make a difference?

And then the furthest i get to is...

Erasing disk /dev/sda, proceed?

So i abort there because it really looks like if i say yes im going to lose my XP partition and a few hours of my time in the process.


So are you saying that if i choose yes on that last option my XP install will be ok?

e_man Wrote:You have that option. If I remeber well.... you have to select the drive that you want to partition and then select manual. after that you'll be able to select the free space for your xbmc install. The only problem is that theres no OS boot option during startup.

I didnt get the same manual option as others, so i started from scratch, erased the whole drive, and installed Win7, left some unpartitioned space (10GB) to install XBMC Live afterwards

dameista Wrote:I deleted the 7Gb partition and when trying to install got the option 'use free space'
It worked like a charm!

I had some issues gaining access to my shares as well, but got them solved.
Apparently Win7 does not like people gaining access to their own shares...
A couple of things that might work if your firewall is configured correctly and sharing is set to Everyone: full access:
- uninstall Windows Live Sign in assistant
- disable Homegroup configurations (or leave Homegroup)
- Win 7 uses SMB2 and once it has connected to a machine using SMB2 (my dual boot Win 7 on the ION in my case), it refuses to connect to anything using SMB1...
A couple of links with possible answers:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=66940
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=65131&page=3

I hope maybe this time I got to help someone else

Guys, I just got a Zotac Zbox and I want to build my HTPC. I installed Windows 7 and ran XBMC on it but I found out that it does not have enough horse-power to display 1080p .mkv files.

As far as I understood XBMC Live or XBMC over Linux would be the solution.

The question is: has anyone succeeded with the dual boot with XBMC Live and Win 7? Is there a tutorial somewhere?

Thanks for your help.