BackTrack v2.0 and MS Vista Dual Boot Guide
by: Brian Blankenship

This article is a quick example of how you can boot Backtrack 2 and Vista on the same machine. I wanted a laptop primarily for use with Backtrack 2 , but since Vista came with it I figured why not have it dual-boot?

The laptop I chose is a Compaq Presario C500 (C501NR). I picked it up for $450 at a popular retailer and added 2GB of RAM for good measure. It has a 1.73Mhz Celeron M 430 processor, 80GB HDD, and a 15.4” 1280x800 resolution display. This procedure was written around this particular laptop, but of course could be adapted for use on other machines.

Recovery

First off, be sure that you have backed up any data you care about, and be sure that you have the means to restore Vista in case things go south for some reason. This system didn't come with a OS restore disk, so I used the utility built into Vista to create the seven recovery CDs (couldn't they spend an extra $1.00 and include an OS DVD?).

I strongly suggest that you actually boot the recovery disks and verify that they will restore (without actually doing it). In my case the recovery process booted fine, but I then got a message saying “These CD's can not be used with this system”. Argh! I went to the on-line chat with HP/Compaq support and explained the situation. They mailed me a DVD after I explained that I was attempting them to restore them to the same machine that they were created on and not trying to pirate Vista. I just wouldn't want to find that I needed to restore later when the warranty was out, and have to go through this sometime down the road. The OS DVD arrived a few days later, and I was ready to continue with the dual boot config.

Side Note: HP/Compaq Bloatware
All of the 'bloatware' as I call it (free trials, annoying pop-up utilities, etc.) that come with new Windows systems can drive a person insane. Restoring from the recovery partition (or DVD in my case) kindly re-installs these useless applications that slow your system down, get in the way, and do who knows what else. While restoring my system I was getting really annoyed at how slow these programs install, combined with the fact that I didn't want them anyway. The system was going through what seemed like an endless cycle of install, reboot, repeat. More than a couple of hours into it, I decided that there must be a better way.

In short, I let it go through the initial couple of reboots until Vista came up for the first real time. As soon as it did, I immediately launched task manager and killed the software installer that HP/Compaq uses. Next I ran regedit and removed the run keys associated with it. The installer is called “FBI GUI Manager”, which I do not believe has anything to do with the security agency as some have suggested. Weird name for a software installer though...

This will also stop the installation of some drivers and software you may want, but all of these can be found C:SwSetup, you just have to figure out which ones to install (and which ones not to!). The upside is a clean install without all of the bloat!.

The system originally had one partition for Vista, and a second recovery partition. I eventually restored the entire system with the recovery DVD after playing around with things, so you won't see the recovery partition in the examples to follow. You can choose to keep the recovery partition, or gain about 5GB by removing it.

Shrink the Vista Partition

Using this dual-boot method, there will be no need to reinstall Vista, we just need to shrink the Vista partition to make room for Backtrack. Vista has a handy utility for doing this built right in.

From Vista, start the Disk Management utility:

Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> Run -> diskmgmt.msc

Vista will warn you about the program running, but you feel lucky and click “Continue” when asked permission.

When the Disk Management utility comes up, you will be shown the partitions on your hard disk. Right-clicking the (C:) partition in the graphical lower portion of the window provides options to 'Shrink' or 'Extend' the volume. I chose to shrink the C: partition to 35GB. This still left 20.84GB of free space for Vista, and freed up 35GB for use by Backtrack . Just enter the amount of space you want to shrink it by, and press the 'shrink' button.

Backtrack 2 installation

Next boot Backtrack 2 from DVD, login, and start KDE with the 'startx' command.

A word about partitioning.... I went very simplistic with the partitioning, creating new partiions for swap and root only. You can of course partition it however you like.

To make things easy, I used qtparted to create the new partitions. It is a graphical utility that is easy to use. Feel free to use fdisk instead if you are comfortable with it.

If any volumes are mounted, qtparted will warn about the potential loss of data when you go to write the new tables. We of course don't want that, so just unmount any mounted partitions first. Open a shell window (second icon from the left at the bottom of the screen) and unmount the partitions.

bt ~ # umount /dev/sda1
bt ~ # umount /dev/sda2 <- if you have a recovery partition

Verify that no partitions are mounted with the mount command.

bt ~ # umount
tmpfs on / tmpfs (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
usbfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbfs (rw,devgid=10,devmode=0666)

There are now no /dev/sda partitions mounted, so we can continue.

Start qtparted by clicking the KDE button and selecting 'Run Command...'. Type qtparted in the Run Command box, and press enter. After qtparted starts, click on /dev/sda in the left window to show the current partition layout.

Right-click /dev/sda-1 (the free disk area) in the right window and select '&Create'.

In the Create Partition window, change the 'Partition Type' to 'linux-swap' and enter the label. Enter the size you want for the swap file. Normally swap should be twice the amount of RAM you have, not to exceed 2GB. I have 2GB of RAM in my system, and decided to go with 2GB (which is probably overkill).

Right-click the /dev/sda-1 free area again and select '&Create' one more time. Enter the label, and leave the size at default. Click 'OK'.

Review the partition table and verify that it is what you want.

Select File -> &Commit to save the changes.

Next, mount the file systems so that Backtrack 2 can be installed. From a shell window, run the following commands:

bt ~ # swapon /dev/sda2 <- enable swap partition
bt ~ # mkdir /tmp/backtrack2 <- create a temporary place to mount /root
bt ~ # mount /dev/sda3 /tmp/backtrack2 <- mount the root partition

Close qtparted if you haven't already, and start the Backtrack Installer.

KDE Start -> Backtrack -> Miscellaneous -> BackTrack Installer

Change the “Install BackTrack to:” entry to the main linux partition we mounted: /tmp/backtrack2

Click the “Real (2700 MB required)” installation.

Click “Install”

Sit back and enjoy the progress meter while Backtrack 2 is copied to your hard disk. This will take about 5 minutes. After it completes, reboot the system.

bt ~ # init 6

The system will reboot and eject the CD, which is fine since it should now reboot to Backtrack2. Next we need to configure LILO to dual-boot both OS's. Login again and start the nano to edit lilo.conf.

LILO Configuration

bt ~ # nano /etc/lilo.conf

Add a new section to boot Vista (shown below), and any other modifications you like. When finished, hit ctl-o to save the file, and ctl-x to exit.

Now run lilo and verify that there are no errors.

Bt ~ # /sbin/lilo
Added bt *
Added Hast-la-Vista

Reboot and you should now have a dual-boot BT2/Vista system!

Check out these other BackTrack Articles:

Using BackTrack v2.0 and Snort for the Rapid Deployment of Network Intrusion Detection System