Learn more CentOS, just like most Linux distributions, will happily co-exist on a hard disk drive with just about any version of Windows up to and including Windows 7. This install windows 10 and centos 7 dual boot free download a concept known as dual-booting. Essentially, when you power up your PC you will be presented with a menu providing the option to boot either CentOS or Windows.
This installation method involves shrinking the size of the existing Windows partition to accommodate the installation of CentOS. How you go about doing this will depend on the version of Windows currently installed on the disk. In order to accommodate CentOS on a disk drive that already contains a Windows installation the first step involves shrinking the Windows partition to make some room. If you are running Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows Server the recommended course of action is to use the Windows Disk Management interface to reduce the size of the partition before attempting to install CentOS.
You can generally access this by right clicking on the Computer icon and selecting Manage from install windows 10 and centos 7 dual boot free download popup menu.
Within the Computer Management interface, select Disk Management to display a graphical representation of the disk drives in your system:. Right click on the partition you wish to reduce and select Shrink Volume. The tool will calculate the maximum amount by which the volume can be shrunk without data loss a process that can take several minutes depending on the overall size of the partition.
Once this analysis is complete, a dialog similar to the one in the following figure will appear:. Enter into the Total size after shrink in MB field the new target size for the partition and click on Shrink to proceed. When prompted to decide on where CentOS is to be installed be sure to select the Use free space on selected drives and create default layout option.
Whilst it is possible to shrink existing Windows partitions using the Windows Disk Management tool on recent versions of Windows, install windows 10 and centos 7 dual boot free download is not possible from within Windows XP. If you need to shrink a Windows XP partition in order to install CentOS, one option is to use one of the commercially available partitioning tools install windows 10 and centos 7 dual boot free download as PartitionMagic.
If you would prefer not to buy a partitioning tool, the repartitioning can also be performed from within the CentOS Live CD using the fdisk and ntfsresize utilities. Before attempting this resizing technique it is vital that you back up all essential data from your Windows XP system. In this section we will be performing some low level disk partitioning activities using command line tools.
Whilst following these steps is an invaluable method for learning about the structure of disk partitions, it is important that you understand that errors in performing the following the steps may result in loss of data.
With that warning out of the way we can proceed. Once loaded, log in and open a terminal window right click anywhere on the desktop and select Open Terminal. In the terminal window, gain root privileges by executing the following command:. The fdisk tool is installed by default but the ntfsresize tool is not part of the standard CentOS distribution or installation repositories. Instead, we need to install from a different source. To enable access to the required repository, one of the following commands must be run depending on whether you are running a bit or bit version of CentOS:.
Now that we have installed the tools we need, the next step is to identify the disk drive on which the Windows XP partition resides.
This is achieved by running the fdisk command as follows:. Since the Install windows 10 and centos 7 dual boot free download column contains an asterisk we also know this is a bootable partition.
Depending on your system configuration you may see different results for example if you have multiple disk drives. Having identified the disk and partition we now need to find out how much unused space install windows 10 and centos 7 dual boot free download available within the partition for us to free up. To obtain this information we use the ntfsresize tool as follows:. The output from ntfsresize for our example tells us that we can safely free up MB of disk space by shrinking the Windows partition.
In practice you will want to leave space on your Windows system for storing future data, so it is recommended that you do not shrink the partition to the full extent available. For the purposes of this example we will shrink the partition to MB.
Before performing the live resize, install windows 10 and centos 7 dual boot free download is best to run through a simulation in order to identify any problems before permanent changes are made. To do this, run ntfsresize with the —no-action option:. Assuming the read-only test runs successfully, the actual resize can be performed by running the same command, but this time without the —no-action option:. At this point we have reduced the size of the NTFS partition but the partition does not yet know we have done so.
If, for example, we use fdisk to tell us about the partition the partition table information still indicates the original size:. In order to address this we will have to delete the partition information and then recreate it with the new size information. Before doing so, make a note of the Start and Id values for the partition provided by the above fdisk command yours will possibly differ from the example and we will need these when we recreate the partition.
Begin by starting fdisk with the name of the disk drive on which we are going to modify the partition table information:. Next, we need to recreate the partition with the new size information keeping in mind that we reduced the partition to MB :. Next, the Id of the partition needs to set to the original value as indicated by the fdisk —l command in this case 7 to indicate the partition uses the Windows NTFS format :.
The resize is now complete and you can reboot the system. The newly freed space will be displayed as Unallocated. Once the installation completes, the system will display the standard boot countdown screen.
Pressing any key on the keyboard at this point will display the boot menu screen as illustrated in the following figure:. This menu provides the option of booting either "CentOS" or "Other". In this instance, selecting "Other" will boot your original Windows installation. In the next section we will cover the steps to modify this menu to change the boot default and rename the "Other" menu option to something more descriptive.
Once you have logged into the system and the desktop is visible the next step is to configure the boot menu so that it lists the alternate operating system as Windows instead of Other.
This file may be edited in a terminal window as follows:. When prompted by the su command to enter a password be sure to enter the root password created during the installation process, not the password you created for your user account during the setup agent configuration steps.
The above menu. The CentOS section of the configuration typically reads as follows:. To configure the system to boot Windows by default simply change this line so that it reads as follows:. To increase or decrease the timeout before the default operating system boots, change the timeout value in this case to 20 seconds :. The final task in our dual boot configuration process is to rename the Windows boot option to something more descriptive than "Other".
To achieve this, simply change the "Other" line as follows:. The next time the system is rebooted, the boot screen will wait 20 seconds before auto-booting. If no keys are pressed the system will now boot Windows by default, instead of CentOS. If the user does intervene and display the boot menu, the Windows option is now titled "Windows" and not "Other". When running CentOS in a dual boot configuration it is still possible to access files located on the Windows partition.
This can be achieved by manually mounting the partition from the command-line. Before doing so, however, some additional packages need to be installed on the system. To do so, run the following commands inside a terminal window:. Once the requisite packages are installed, the next step is to create a directory to use as the mount point for our Windows partition.
When prompted for a password by the su command, enter the root password specified during install windows 10 and centos 7 dual boot free download CentOS installation process. Under some circumstances you may get a message that the Windows partition needs to be checked.
If so, either reboot into Windows again and manually run chkdsk if it does not run automatically during the boot processor force the mount with the —o option:. Jump to: navigationsearch. Navigation menu Personal tools. Namespaces Page Discussion. Views Read View source View history. This page was last modified on 27 Octoberat Copyright Payload Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Table of Contents.
