Need Help installing Windows 7

[Snowglobes_The_Destroyer]

Hello, I'm having an issue;

 

I own a Lenovo Y50-70 laptop and am trying to install windows 7 on it as a dual boot with Linux Mint which is already installed.
The issue comes as follows:

• I have an installation disk for windows (external DVD drive), and for some reason on bootup, it isn't recognized.
• I tried transferring the disk to a usb flash drive (Which I used to install Linux Mint 19.2 today without any issues or hiccups), That didn't work either.
• I tried using WINE to install windows 7, but I can't seem to manage, I keep coming to the error on the win7 setup which says "To install Windows, make sure that a partition on your boot disk has at least 826 megabytes of free space".

I'm willing to try quite a few things.

 

I would like to clarify that I want a Dual Boot solution for Win7 and Linux, and would rather avoid a Virtual Machine windows inside of my linux.

 

Thank you in advance for all the help!

[Mnky313]

6 minutes ago, Snowglobes_The_Destroyer said:

• I tried transferring the disk to a usb flash drive (Which I used to install Linux Mint 19.2 today without any issues or hiccups), That didn't work either.

What did you use to transfer it?
Try using IMGBurn to turn the disk into an ISO, then Rufus to move it on a USB drive and make it bootable.

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10 minutes ago, Snowglobes_The_Destroyer said:

Hello, I'm having an issue;

 

I own a Lenovo Y50-70 laptop and am trying to install windows 7 on it as a dual boot with Linux Mint which is already installed.
The issue comes as follows:

• I have an installation disk for windows (external DVD drive), and for some reason on bootup, it isn't recognized.

What exactly did you try?  Just having it present may not cause it to choose that by default.  Make sure you explicitly select it at boot up.  Or is it not even being offered in the boot menu/BIOS?

10 minutes ago, Snowglobes_The_Destroyer said:

• I tried using WINE to install windows 7

I am remarkably confused by this, what exactly do you mean?

[Snowglobes_The_Destroyer]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

What exactly did you try?  Just having it present may not cause it to choose that by default.  Make sure you explicitly select it at boot up.  Or is it not even being offered in the boot menu/BIOS?

I am remarkably confused by this, what exactly do you mean?

1. not offered at bootup
2. Honestly, I just wanted to see if it would work. my goal was to see if I can make it work if I can just open setup.exe.....obviously that wasn't the case.

 

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3 minutes ago, Snowglobes_The_Destroyer said:

1. not offered at bootup

Ah ok, well then that's what we have to solve here.  It should be as easy as selecting that device, and you'll figure out the rest from there I'm sure.  If you don't know already though, you will have to run a linux live CD to fix GRUB afterwards as the Windows installer will overwrite your bootloader.

 

How did you install Linux in the first place?  Must have been a bootable USB?

Quote

2. Honestly, I just wanted to see if it would work. my goal was to see if I can make it work if I can just open setup.exe.....obviously that wasn't the case.

Ah I see, yeah no it doesn't work like that

[Snowglobes_The_Destroyer]

Quote

Ah ok, well then that's what we have to solve here.  It should be as easy as selecting that device, and you'll figure out the rest from there I'm sure.  If you don't know already though, you will have to run a linux live CD to fix GRUB afterwards as the Windows installer will overwrite your bootloader.

 

How did you install Linux in the first place?  Must have been a bootable USB?

yep, bootable usb. also I'll probably need help with GRUB. I'm quite new to the linux stuff. 

 

Quote

10 minutes ago, Mnky313 said:

What did you use to transfer it?
Try using IMGBurn to turn the disk into an ISO, then Rufus to move it on a USB drive and make it bootable.

 

Gonna give this another go now. I used something else, not rufus, so I'm attempting with that now

[Snowglobes_The_Destroyer]

I got it recognized using Rufus, so that's good. But it looks like it's stuck on "starting windows"...
For now I'll leave it on and hope that it continues. Though, I am doubtful it will.

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3 minutes ago, Snowglobes_The_Destroyer said:

yep, bootable usb. also I'll probably need help with GRUB. I'm quite new to the linux stuff. 

 

Gonna give this another go now. I used something else, not rufus, so I'm attempting with that now

Ok that's good news, it means it should be able to find the USB at least, even if the CD option isn't working.  I'd recommend what was suggested with ripping the disk and using Rufus to make a USB, then proceed from there.  We can work on GRUB when/if that comes up.  Make sure you have a bootable Linux USB lying around already in case anything goes wrong with the Windows install, as the older versions were bad for leaving you with an unusable system due to a catch 22 unless you were able to rescue them with another device.  For example, needing ethernet drivers to get online.

[Snowglobes_The_Destroyer]

3 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Ok that's good news, it means it should be able to find the USB at least, even if the CD option isn't working.  I'd recommend what was suggested with ripping the disk and using Rufus to make a USB, then proceed from there.  We can work on GRUB when/if that comes up.  Make sure you have a bootable Linux USB lying around already in case anything goes wrong with the Windows install, as the older versions were bad for leaving you with an unusable system due to a catch 22 unless you were able to rescue them with another device.  For example, needing ethernet drivers to get online.

Honestly, I only have one USB drive. Means I keep switching OS installs on it if I ever need to. Hopefully we can keep the switching to a minimal, though I will do it as many times as I need too.

 

I wonder why they had the drivers like that. It's so weird and clunky in the bad way. Luckily, I have a cd for drivers and stuff as well as my usb drive (plus, this is for my laptop. I still have my desktop which is working fine, which means downloads and stuff can be done easily, as well as help while the laptop is doing stuff)


Also, this "Starting Windows" aint budging. For now I'll leave it on until you guys have a plan of action I can take

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Just now, Snowglobes_The_Destroyer said:

Honestly, I only have one USB drive. Means I keep switching OS installs on it if I ever need to. Hopefully we can keep the switching to a minimal, though I will do it as many times as I need too.

 

I wonder why they had the drivers like that. It's so weird and clunky in the bad way. Luckily, I have a cd for drivers and stuff as well as my usb drive (plus, this is for my laptop. I still have my desktop which is working fine, which means downloads and stuff can be done easily, as well as help while the laptop is doing stuff)


Also, this "Starting Windows" aint budging. For now I'll leave it on until you guys have a plan of action I can take

ok, I just don't want to see you get stuck in a bad situation.  As long as you have local installers for your drivers it should be fine.  As for the Starting Windows, seems like the transfer may not have worked correctly.  These things can be temperamental, I've had issues making bootable Linux disks in the past and never tried it with Windows before version 10.

[Snowglobes_The_Destroyer]

So, what do you think? should I reset the pc and try again (maybe I moved the USB drive or something)

[Snowglobes_The_Destroyer]

I've since completely formatted the drive deleting Linux. Still no luck. I'm gonna go to sleep for now. If I succeed or fail, I'll probably post back here. As of right now, It seems my laptop is gonna be Linux only, which is gonna be annoying cause I need to work on code and I like using VS2015 and Notepad++

[Kon-Tiki]

The way I got a dual boot system running was to install Windows first, installing Linux afterwards. The convenient thing of doing it that way is that Linux Mint recognizes the Windows installation and automatically configures GRUB in a way that you can select which OS you want to boot in to on every start up.

 

I hope that works for you.

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3 hours ago, Kon-Tiki said:

The way I got a dual boot system running was to install Windows first, installing Linux afterwards. The convenient thing of doing it that way is that Linux Mint recognizes the Windows installation and automatically configures GRUB in a way that you can select which OS you want to boot in to on every start up.

 

I hope that works for you.

That's ideal if you have the option, which I guess does exist now since the drive has been wiped.  Just need to work on getting that bootable Windows USB to work