How I set up a dual boot Linux/XP Toshiba laptop.

About this document:

This document is intended to describe my experiences in the hope of helping and inspiring others (hope that doesn't sound to pretentious). When I first thought about doing this I looked about for information, but could not find much that was up to date and about my laptop, so I thought I would write up my own experiences, and to judge from my web logs there are quite a lot of people are finding this useful.
I am not a computer scientist (in fact I am an ecologist by training) and this is my first attempt at setting up and using Linux. So if you find I have made any mistakes or you have any helpful suggestions, please feel free to get in touch.

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Having bought a new 100GB hard drive for my laptop, I decided to set it up to dual boot Linux or Windows XP. I decided to use Windows XP, as it was provided as a recovery CD with my laptop, and Suse Linux 10.1 (the processes is much the same with Suse Linux 10.2) , as this version is reputed to provide good support for laptops. This is how I went about it and what has happened so far...

Background:

This is my laptop, a Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000. It has given me four years of trouble free service, so far...

The specification of my computer is given below:

1.20 GHz Pentium III SpeedStep processor
1024MB system memory (OEM Part No: PA3108U), originally it came with 512 MB (OEM Part No: PA3086U) which I have upgraded
100GB Hard drive (a Toshiba MK1031GAS, which replaced the original 40GB Toshiba HDD)
Toshiba SD-R6472 Double-Layer DVD-Writer (this replaced the Matsushita UJDA720 CD-RW/DVD-ROM drive which came with the laptop)
15.0" XGA-TFT, 1024 X 768 Display
Trident Video Accelerator CyberBlade XP Ai1 (Trident CyberALADDIN-T (M1644) chipset) Display controller, with 16MB Video RAM
ALI M1535 Sound Chip
Type II x2, Type III x1 PCMCIA Card controllers
IrDA Infrared port
Two USB 1.1 ports (I have added two USB 2 ports on a PCMCIA card)
Integrated V.92/56K Modem
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet LAN card
Integrated Mini-PCI WiFi wireless LAN card (802.11b)
Port replicator (which it is docked into most of the time)

For standard spec see http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/eng/spec.php3?model=PS6000U

Installing the new hardware:

Upgrading memory

This was the time I had made a hardware change to my laptop which involved wielding a screwdriver (i.e. not plug n play), it was allot easier than I expected. First make sure that you are static free, use an anti-static mat or earth your self. Then disconnect your laptop from its power supply and turn it over, then remove battery. Remove the cover marked B4, release the two lugs holding the memory modules in place. With the memory modules released you can grasp the module by the edges (taking care not to not touch the contacts) gently but firmly pull the module out. Reverse the procedure with new module.

If you want to upgrade the memory but are not sure how much memory you have already or how much you can increase it by then try using the Crucial system scanner. Download and run the system scanner, and it will tell you: how much memory you have, what kind of Ram you need, what size you should use and how many modules you can install. You can also use the Crucial Memory Advisor site, you don't want to run the system scanner on your machine.

If you find that your laptop suddenly shuts down without any reason, sometimes there is an increase in the noise from the fan just before it happens, then you probably have an over heating problem there are several solutions which you can apply. The first obvious thing is to ensure that the fan is clean (this can require a strip down which I have yet to undertake, but when I do I will post details here), second the memory modules can be fitted with Vantec ICEBERQ DDR memory heat spreaders, and thirdly use a laptop cooler, personally I use a Vantec Lapcool 4.

Hard Drive

Again having never changed a hard drive before I was a little nervous before I started, but it turned out to be a doodle. First disconnect your laptop from its power supply and turn it over, then remove battery. Make sure that you are static free (use an anti-static mat or earth your self), remove the cover marked F6, pull out the hard drive using the attached tab, and remover the chassis with the tab on it so that you can move it to the new hard drive. Then reverse these instructions with the new hard drive, taking care not to when sliding the hard drive in not to bend the pins.

Installing the new software:

XP

As this is project is using MS Window as part of the dual boot, Windows must be installed first as Microsoft has no respect for other software. Also I was using the recovery CD which came with my laptop and this formats the hard drive without asking.

So to install Win XP, put the recovery CD in the disk drive and held down C on the keyboard as I started the computer then followed the instructions. (As there are plenty of descriptions of installing Windows, such as this one from The Elder Geek, so I will not go into detail here.) XP having installed, I found that the hard drive had been partitioned into four 23.2 GB FAT32 partitions. Toshiba provide a utility to format the "C:" partition as NTFS, which is recommended, I was happy to leave the other partitions as Linux can write to these and so they can be used from either OS. I decided to use one of these FAT32 partitions to install Linux.

SuSE Linux 10.1:

To install Linux you will need an install disk, I down loaded a DVD ISO of Suse Linux 10.1 from http://en.opensuse.org and burnt it to disc my self. The downside of doing it this way is that you only have access to limited support and documentation. Support is available for a very reasonable €25 (about £17) which is probable a good idea for the new (or not so new) comer, or I could of course ordered a copy on disc for about £38. I think I may yet put my hand in my pocket...

Before starting the Linux install, I formatted one of the unused FAT32 partitions as ext2 partition using Paragon Partition Manager 8.5, to give me a dedicated Linux partition. It is also a good idea to create a swap partition of about 1GB from your dedicated Linux partition, as for some reason SuSE Linux doesn't do this by default. It can run with out a swap partition, but works better if you have one.

If you want to use the Integrated WiFi wireless LAN card with Linux do remember to physically turn it on using the switch to the left of the keyboard (between the SD card slot and the volume control) before starting the installation, otherwise the Linux setup won't know it is there. Another issue to think about if you are going to use the Integrated WiFi wireless LAN card is that is only 802.11b, therefore can only use WEP security, which can easily broken. This means that your entire wireless network has to use this weaker encryption. It might be worth investing in a 802.11g USB wireless adapter, such a the D-link DWL-G122, or a PC card adapter, this would enable you to use the stronger WPA security. Of course your choice of protocol will ultimately depend on the wireless access point (i.e. is it 802.11b only or 11b & 11g) you are trying to connect to, these are all things to bare in mind when setting up

To start the installation put the DVD (or CD1) in the DVD/CD drive and reboot holding down F12 on the key board, the select C from the boot menu. I my case the installer found the ext2 partition and proceeded to reformat it to provide the appropriate partitions, 1.5GB Ext3, 8.8GB ReiserFS and 13 GB ReiserFS (I didn't create a swap partition the first time and nor did the SuSE Linux installer), to which I agreed to when asked. That is one of the major differences between setting up Windows and Linux, Linux is polite and doesn't just assume that it can trash the existing settings on the hard drive. The rest of the set up was very smooth (and very similar to Niall Brady's screen shots of installing Suse 10 from linux-noob.com). I will refer to some of these again later.

The most confusing part of the install came at the Network Configuration (see screen shot from linux-noob) stage. To judge from the forum posts this is an area where quite a few people have problems here, I found that the following this tutorial really helped. Even then having entered all my details and settings, I tried the test connection button and got a connection failure message (see screen shot from linux-noob), but when I finished the install and tried to open Firefox it worked first time and took me strait to Novell. So my advice is ignore the connection failure message, don't go back to try and fix things because it isn't broken.

Next comes the user set up bit which is really strait forward.

Click through a couple more screens and you get to the hardware set up. Here I found that the monitor was not detected and had to be set up manually, all the relevant settings were there it is just that I had to set then correctly in three places all in a row (see screen shot from linux-noob). This could be made clearer, I got it wrong first time and the result was not pretty.

The next problem was when I tried to set up the printer and was told that parallel port was not configured . This came as a surprise to me as my printer has been happily printing from it under windows for four years.

I resolved this problem by changing the BIOS settings, if you need to do this just follow these instructions. Reboot or start computer your, press the ESC key as computer starts, then press the F1 key, this will display the BIOS settings. To navigate the through the settings you use the arrow keys to move around the screen and PgUp/PgDn to change pages (there are two). On the first page you will see the Parallel Port mode, this should be set to "Std. Bi-Directional" if it showing "ECP" then change it by pressing the SPACE bar on your key board. Then move to the second screen, using the PgDn key, then navigate to I/O Ports - Parallel and then change the setting using the SPACE bar to = LPT1(378H/IRQ7). If you are happy with the changes press the END key to save your settings and exit.

When I finally got the parallel port working, I found that Suse Linux comes with the relevant divers for my printer, so YaST was able to configure it automatically.

Having completed the installation I reboot my computer and was greeted with the grub boot screen giving me the option of choosing which OS to boot. If after ten seconds no change has been made Suse Linux boots by default. This can be changed by opening YaST then going to System > Boot Loader and changing the default setting . Also see this tutorial.

Having read that sound can be a problem I down loaded a mp3 file of a radio program which I had missed from the BBC web site. Low and behold Banshee opened and played strait off. Can't see what people make such a fuss about.

I haven't tested everything yet, so you will have to check back later to find out how I get on connecting my mobile phone via Bluetooth and how I get on with setting a WiFi network, etc etc...

Well so far I have been unable to get Bluetooth to work under Linux although it works under XP. Nor can I connect my phone via IR under Linux, although once again it works fine under XP. Fortunately the dual booting work well so I can simply swap to a different OS if I find something I want to do doesn't work under one.

Interim conclusions:

The project is not yet finished, but I hope one day it will be. Is it worth it? Yes. Would I recommend that others try it? Yes, defiantly. Dual booting is a great way to find out about another using OS, when I had the problems with accessing my printer mean that I would be reluctant to use Linux as my sole OS. My experience so far has been positive I like the look and feel of the Gnome desktop, I like the flexibility of being able to switch to KDE or Xterm when ever I feel like it. The stability and flexibility of Linux is also appealing. In terms of value for money Linux is fantastic, easily out classing Microsoft in these terms, and by dual booting I retain the security of an OS with which I am already familiar. If you need further information see the Toshiba Satellite Pro 6000 laptop User Manual (3.4Mb PDF) and by popular demand I have also now added a copy of the field service manual (4.9Mb PDF).