RedHat Enterprise 6 and Windows 7 dual boot

Question

I have currently Windows 7 running and installed on partition C. I have partition D empty , and I would like to install Red Hat on it without affecting Windows seven ( i.e., dual boot Windows 7 & Red Hat6 ).

Can any one please guide me how to do so? I

Answer 1

You should be able to boot from your Linux CD, and during the installation process, choose the correct partition to install Linux on. From there, the Linux installation process should automatically configure a boot loader for dual boot.

It's entirely possible that some step of this process won't be automatic, and the biggest risk you run is having the installer delete your Windows partitions. Ideally, with dual boot, you would have a separate hard drive to install on, and could disconnect your Windows drive to protect it. From there you could boot from the BIOS quick select (usually the Esc key).

All that said, I suggest setting up a VM product like VirtualBox or VMWare Player, and seeing if running RHEL6 in a VM meets your needs. If it does, you're all set, and can work in both OSes side by side. If you still need to install RHEL to the hard drive for performance reasons, you'll at least have a better idea of what to expect from setting up the VM.

Answer 2

I assume when you installed windows, you must have left some free space on your hard drive for the RHEL 5 installation.

burn the image to the usb drive, boot from it, install graphically, install grub as bootloader and TO THE MBR

Now, fdisk -l to list the paritions check and look up the parition for example /dev/sda2 where windows is installed as ntfs. open up a terminal and edit with vi /boot/grub/menu.lst and add the following corresponding to your windows parition.

(0) YOUR RHEL entry
(1) Windows
title Windows 7
rootnoverify (hd0,1) (you might ask why (0,1) well for sda1 it would be (0,0) and sda2 (0,1) and so on...)
makeactive
chainloader +1

reboot and you should be able to boot both into rhel and windows

Answer 3

You said that you're currently running Windows 7 and have it installed on partition C. Partition D is empty, and you want to install RHEL6 on it without affecting Windows 7 (i.e., dual booting Windows 7 & Red Hat6).

First of all, log into Windows 7 and remove the D partition from disk management. Go to the run dialog box and type diskmgmt.msc.

Now, check free space. You can use the shrink option in Windows 7 to decrease your main partition (the C drive). Right-click on the C, then shrink the volume. After that you have to restart your system because you changed your main partition configuration.

Then, boot from the RHEL6 DVD and install RHEL6 normally. Now during the installation, when RHEL6 asks for type of installation, choose create custom layout.

My partiton layout is:

Windows

• C partition is 28 GB
• D partition is 128 GB

Linux

• / partition is 26 GB
• /boot partition is 500 MB
• /home partition is 16 GB
• /tmp partition is 4 GB
• /usr partition is 6 GB
• /var partition is 14 GB
• /usr/local partition is 4.5 GB
• /opt partition is 11 GB
• swap partition is twice the size as your RAM
• /yoo partition is 16 GB, vfat filesystem

If you're using two HDDs, then the installation is different, so I recommend you to install on one HDD only.