Friday, February 27, 2009

Install Ubuntu (Linux) Inside Windows Without Formatting Hard-Disk

Many of us have never tried Linux or Ubuntu or Fedora because we are too comfortable and acquainted with Windows XP and Windows Vista that we don’t want get out of the comfort zone to try out other operating systems.

Another big reason for those who want to try Linux or Ubuntu is that you needed to have advance knowledge of disk partitions and had to create proper partitions to install Linux on your computer. So many of us, even I did not bother to take the pain to make my machine dual boot to run Linux as well as windows. But all this has changed after Wubi !

wubi-ubuntu-installer

In this post i'll tell you how you can Install Ubuntu without formatting your hard-disk, without risk of loosing your windows partitions by mistake, and in a simple and easy way.

Fix:

Good News is that if you have Ubuntu CD 8.10 Desktop Edition or later, the Wubi installer comes bundled with it, so no extra download needed. If you have older version of ubuntu CD, you can either download Wubi here or better options is to Download Complete ubuntu setup CD image (700 MB download) and burn it to a disk, or if u have a slow or limited internet, you can order a free ubuntu CD here.

Installing Ubuntu

After you got an ubuntu CD, just put it in tray while Windows are running, it will show auto play options to run menu, run it or double click on drive, it will show menu like below:

ubuntu-cd-menu

Just click Install Inside Windows options and it will further show you a window to Input the following:

1. Installation Drive – Select drive on which you want to allocate space for it. It will just reserve that space and not format your drive.

2. Installation Size – Size you want to give it. We recommend you to use about 10GB if you have enough space.

3. Environment – Ubuntu would do fine for you.

4. Language – Whatever language you prefer.

5. Username and Password – You will need it to login into ubuntu.

ubuntu-installation-options

After you provide all this input, it will copy installation files from CD to the space on the drive you selected above, this will take about 10 minutes, and then it will ask you to reboot the computer as shown below:

re-boot-ubuntu-installation

After this reboot, the ubuntu will install inside your windows drive, this installation will further take about 10 to 15 minutes, depending on your computer’s speed. after this is done, your computer will show you a menu to select the OS while booting, from where you can boot in ubuntu.

windows-ubuntu-boot-menu

After selecting ubuntu, you will get to login screen, use the username and password you entered in the steps above. And here is what it looks like after boot:

ubuntu-8-snapshot

So have a happy time exploring ubuntu.

Removing Ubuntu

In case you don’t like to keep it at later time, you can simply un-install by booting in Windows, going to Control Panel > Add Remove programs (Programs and Features for Vista user) and then simply un-install the entry with name ubuntu.

ubuntu-uninstall-options

un-install-ubuntu

This is probably the easiest and most convenient way of installing Linux without harming windows.



source:TroubleFixers - All about fixing computer troubles

Monday, February 9, 2009

Make Pen Drive Write Protected

Portable drives or cards can be write protected by two ways either by physical lock provided on some of the pen drives, but locking the drive with physical lock is not a good way as any one can move the physical lock and make your drive writable.

Make Drive Write Protected With Physical Lock

memory-card-lock

Second method to make the drive write protected involves a registry hack which actually is computer dependent not the drive as it deals with registry.

Note: With this registry hack you will actually make all the removable drives connected to your computer write protected, as this registry hack instructs windows to make any removable storage device write protected.

Write Protect Instructions

Download writeprotect.bat in a zip package from here and extract the files on pen drive and double click writeprotect.bat to make your drive write protected. You will need to eject your pen drive once after launching the batch file to make your drive write protected on the computer.

Disable Write Protect Instructions

Download disablewriteprotect.bat in a zip package from here (this package is same as bove, download any of these two) and extract the files on the pen drive and double click disablewriteprotect.bat to disable write protection on your pen drive. You will need to eject your pen drive once after launching the batch file to disable write protection.

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