Adding another Win7 partition and DD upgrade

You can have four Primary partitions or three and any number of Logical partitions. Since you already have three Primary partitions and a Logical partition, the drive can't have another Primary partition. (There are only four slots in the partition table.)

The Windows 7 x86 partition would need to be Logical or you would need to relocate the OSS partition to another drive. If Logical, I'm not sure if OSS 11 will pick it up automatically or not. There are also difference with how Windows needs to be setup when using Logical partitions so that you don't end up with it booting from an existing Primary partition. Personally, I would move the OSS partition and keep things simple on the booting drive (four Primary partitions for Windows).

DD11 and OSS 11 do handle Windows 7 much better than the 10 versions.

Thanks for the quick response MudCrab, very glad your still around.

Gotcha on the 4 partitions, I thought for some reason it was max 4 primary partitions.

I could move the oss partition to the 2nd drive that I'm using for shared data, which would be drive1 in bios. It just has 1 primary ntfs partition. If thats going to be a pain, I could just install my fresh Win7 x86 over top the existing vista partition. I have another older machine than I could get that up and running on anyway.

Lesser of the 2 evils??

Whatever is easiest for you.

Keep in mind that "moving" the OSS partition won't work without fixing it. You will have to reactivate it afterwards, at the very least, or reinstall it. You may want to switch to OSS 11 at that time (in which case you could just remove the OSS partition and install OSS 11 where you want it).

OSS shouldn't have a problem on the Data partition. You could also resize that partition just a bit and make room for a new OSS partition.

If the computer is powerful enough, you might consider running one or more Windows in a VM. This may or may not work for you, depending on your particular requirements. Obviously, the gaming system is not going to work in a VM.

Thanks for your help. Going to try it tomorrow.

Wouldn't installing a virtual machine be a more flexible solution for your problem?

I do have a few vm machines on a server that I use. Comes in very handy when supporting so many different clients.

This particular workstation, I want what I do the most of, though. Some of my clients use special usb devices, that don't work in a vm.

Thanks

OK, I have everything resized and ready to go. I uninstalled dd10 and installed dd11. Had to edit the oss file, but all is working.

Now to upgrade/overwrite my vista partition with a new Win7x86 install, do I just go into oss selector, hide all partitions except the vista one, boot into it and install from the vista os? Think I can do a fresh install from inside Vista. Won't the Win7 install see the other partitions-even though they are hidden? This is where I get fuzzy. I tried this months ago and it wrote the boot files where ever it wanted.

Advice?

If you want to make sure that OSS doesn't do something unexpected with the partitions, boot to the DD CD and set them how you want: make the Vista partition Active and hide the other Windows partitions. Then boot directly to the Windows 7 DVD (don't boot to OSS). Install Windows 7 to the Vista partition (make sure to select the correct partition -- the others will be displayed). The booting files should be placed on the correct partition since it's Active.

It should also work to do the install from inside Vista.

ok - that went well. I have it booting straight to the new Win7x86 partition, oss is deactivated, and using dd11 all other partitions are hidden. Re-booted fine.

Now, this is where I always mess-up. When I go back in to dd11, what do I unhide / make active? Then after that, do I just activate oss and it will pick the partition up - or do I have to do some editing?

Kevin

ps. I don't understand the relationship between setting the partitions in DD11 and then again in OSS - hence my needed step by step help...

You use DD to manually apply the settings for when you want to boot into a specific OS. OSS will automatically apply the settings for you when you select to boot into an OS. The reason I recommend this is because it gets Windows and OSS out of the process and makes it easier to avoid problems. Technically, it should work without going to this trouble (and I'm sure it does for some people).

You should be able to use DD to unhide all the partitions and then install OSS. If you don't mind having to possibly edit the BOOTWIZ.OSS file, you could install OSS while the other partitions are hidden. Just be aware that this can cause the Active/Hidden bug (if it hasn't been fixed). Personally, I recommend unhiding all the partitions using DD from the CD and then installing OSS from the CD. You can install OSS in Windows later if you want to use it there.

Once OSS is installed, edit each entry so that the correct partitions are hidden.

Thank you very much. Everything is at it should be. DD-OSS/11 seems to make a big difference - especially where Windows 7 is concerned.

Thanks for clarifying the order of using dd/oss. I just un-hid everything in DD and set everything in oss as usual. No problems at all.

Thanks again MudCrab - came through for me again.

Kevin

You're welcome. I'm glad it worked out well for you.