Problematic dual boot

[Eberhard Roloff]

Hi Lisi,

Lisi Reisz wrote:
> Good evening all!
> Sorry - the bad penny has turned up again.... ;-)
> 
> The dual boot is XP/Kubuntu Hardy Heron.  One runs perfectly, the other has a 
> very persistent virus that can, surprise, surprise, disable virus scanners.  
> I don't need to tell you which is which.

Use a virus scanner on Linux to find and remove the windows virusses. 
This sometimes works better than trying to remove Malwqare from a 
windows machine that is running malware.
> 
> The owner has given me complete carte blanche.  "Do whatever you think needs 
> doing."  A bit nerve-wracking. ;-)

and a very good chance...
> 

> 
> What would you lot advise?  Or what would you do in my shoes?  If installing 
> XP with the Kubuntu partition as it is now would indeed, as I suspect, muck 
> up the MBR so that Kubuntu became inaccessible, how easy would that be to 
> fix?  And how would I fix it?  And am I right in thinking that, with more 
> memory his system would be powerful enough for VB.  The maximum RAM his board 
> can handle is apparently 2 GB.
2 GB is great for Linux with VB. And VB installation is dead easy and 
very well documented.

Now, say, you allow your XP inside Virtual-Box to use 768 MB, so it will 
have 50% more memory than today. The remaining 1.25 (or so) GB will be 
pretty ok for Linux, since this will be more than 2 times of what he has 
now.

This adds up to a very good user experience, assuming that he does not 
do hardcor5e gaming and the like in Windows.

Moreover the benefit of never ever have to dual boot again, will buy 
this idea easily.


> 
> As a last resort I have permission to reinstall the lot if I deem it 
> necessary, but am reluctant to do so when Kubuntu is running so well and when 
> he will inevitably have tweaked it in many small ways over time.

No need to reinstall Kubuntu. Just save your mbr BEFORE you reinstall 
windows. You can do it like this:
if=/dev/sda1 of=sda1_bootsector bs=512 count=1

Then reinstall Windows which will recklessly overwrite the MBR.

Finally save the then existing Windows-MBR (just to be safe) and play 
back the original MBR, that you saved before installing Windows.

For the last two steps you will most probably a Boot CDRom.

Have some fun

Eberhard