Setting up a dual boot Win 7 & sid

[LRC1962]

Old machine died got a new machine with an Intel Core i5 8 GB ram GeForce GT 620
Old machine ran on unstable siduction kernal 32 bit old radeon card updated as of early Dec.
1) If I hooked up just the drives from the old machine, how easy could it get itself setup to new hardware?
2) If I were able to get the sid OS that I currently have working, how can I get a dual boot working after rehooking up the drive with the Win 7 on it?
Everything I have seen just talks about clean installs. I know that it probably be best to do a clean install, but I have many things that I use that have special configurations and have had then so long I can not remember what the configurations including user names etc. are any more and therefore would like to avoid that horror trial.

[devil]

Your answer is twofold. From the little I know of windows, the swapping will not work because of driver issues. with linux it will work because it has all the drivers needed onboard. Maybe someone will prove me wrong about windows, but I do not think so.


greetz
devil

[dibl]

If the old PC is dead, then I think you mean that you would install the drive with siduction on the new PC, right?  In that case I think devil has misunderstood the situation -- it could work.


If the new PC has UEFI, that's a big challenge.  I think you would need to set that to "legacy" mode, if possible.  If you can get the machine to a configuration where it will boot either hdd A or hdd B, then you might want to leave it that way and use the BIOS boot sequence to choose which OS you want to boot.  Or, you could try to re-install grub on the mbr of the hdd with siduction on it, and let os-prober add the Windows drive to the boot menu.  I have not tried this trick with a UEFI system, so I don't know whether or how that is possible.

[devil]

So, dibl, are you saying, nowadays you can take a windows disk out of a box and put it in a box with different hardware and it will boot? I remember that never working, but that was ages ago. noone lets me close to a windowes box these days


greetz
devil

[dibl]

No, I agree that won't work.  I think you mis-read the OP's plan -- I think he intends to move only the hdd with siduction on it and, after disconnecting the Windows hdd, connect the siduction hdd to the new computer.  Then he wonders what will happen when he re-connects the Windows hdd.

[ReinerS]

Moving an existing Windows onto a new Computer could/can be done by running the tool sysprep finally before the move.
As the old Computer seems to be dead this is propably not possible any more and so a new installation might be needed.

regards

Reiner

[LRC1962]

Clearing up some issues. The new machine has Win 7 out of the box. Because I did not want even more confusion was going to try and see if linux from old box could get running without the Win 7 HD in it.
Will just go in and try it. Didn't want to lose everything on the 1st try.

[devil]

That should work, probably needs grub reinstalled, but other than that straightforward.


greetz
devil

[LRC1962]

Did fresh install. Think upgrade did some damage I could not recover from with my experience level. Ran into other problems with installation but got them fixed I hope.