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[How to] Dual Boot Chromium OS with Windows

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chromium-login
Chrome OS was announced by Google in July of 2009, they also announced Chromium in November which was the open source version of Chrome OS. Chrome/Chromium OS is based on Linux and it resembles Google’s popular web browser with the same name. Unlike Chromium OS which can be run on any hardware, Chrome only works with specific hardware partners of Google. Currently there are many Chromebooks which are being manufactured by various manufacturers and some of them are already available. A developer who goes by the name of Hexxeh was able to successfully port Chromium on Windows Desktops & Laptops. In this guide I will show you how to dual boot Chromium OS with Windows 7. This customized Chromium OS build is called as Flow, there are some bugs, but I am using it for some time now, and am happy with it.

Note:

  • Please read the procedures more than twice before actually doing it.
  • You need two USB drives with more than 2Gb of free space

Downloads:

  • Download the the latest Chromium OS image for your pen-drive from here
  • Download Image writer for Windows from here
  • Download WinRAR from here (Skip this if you already have WinRAR installed)
  • Download GRUB 4 DOS from here
  • Download Gparted live .iso from here
  • Download Tuxboot from here

Procedure:

Installing Grub4DOS

  1. Extract all the contents of grub4dos.zip which you downloaded earlier to a folder, now copy the files grldr.mbr, grldr and menu.lst to your C drive (Not in any folder).
  2. Open command prompt by typing cmd in the search area and pressing enter.
  3. Give the following command: BCDEDIT.EXE /create /d “Google Chrome OS” /application bootsector
  4. Now a GUID code will pop up on your screen, copy this code to notepad and keep the notepad open
  5. Now give the following command: BCDEDIT.EXE /set {GUID code from notepad} device boot
  6. Give another command: BCDEDIT.EXE /set {GUID code from notepad} path \grldr.mbr
  7. Now give the command: BCDEDIT.EXE /displayorder {GUID code from notepad} /addlast
command

Installing Chromium OS to your USB drive

  1. Insert USB drive, now install and open Windows Image writer application
  2. Now go to the place where you downloaded the vanilla chromium OS and extract it to .IMG file using WinRAR
  3. Go to image writer, choose the letter of your drive, now click on the folder icon and go to where you had saved the Chromium O.S image
  4. Click on start, it will copy all the files to your pen drive and also will make your pen drive bootable
copy-image

Installing Gparted on to a flash drive

  1. Take another USB drive, insert it in your desktop/laptop (Remove the pen drive in which you installed Chromium OS)
  2. Install and run Tuxboot
  3. Select Gparted live from the dropdown list
  4. Browse and select the Gparted live.iso which you had downloaded earlier
  5. Now choose the USB drive which you had just inserted
  6. Now click on OK and let it copy
select-live
select-iso
final-gparted

Boot and test Chromium OS from USB drive

  1. Remove the USB drive in which you had installed Gparted live
  2. Now switch off your Desktop/Laptop with the USB drive in which you installed Chromium OS still attached
  3. Boot into BIOS and choose to boot from USB drive in settings
  4. Now do a reboot, you will be booting into Chromium OS (Be patient, it takes some time to boot)
  5. Now if it does not load or if there is a problem then keep on trying 3-4 Chromium OS boots up, if it doesn’t you can come and ask us here (It took me 5 attempts to finally boot into Chromium OS the first time)

Running Gparted

  1. Turn off your laptop/desktop
  2. Now with Chrome USB and Gparted CD still inside the comp, boot to Gparted live CD
  3. Now make a minimum of 4 GB of free space from your Windows partition using Gparted
  4. Now using Gparted make 2 partitions of the 4Gb free space of which one will be ext2 of 1 Gb, rest of the partition will be in ext3 format
  5. Now using Gparted copy the ext2 partition from the USB drive (Chromium OS) to the ext2 partition which we just created, and the ext3 partition of the USB drive(ChromiumOS) to the ext3 partition we just created
1
Select the Windows partition and set it up as session and resize/move

Let’s boot Chromium OS kernel using Grub4Dos, shall we?

  1. Once you have done the above procedure, press exit and boot into Windows again
  2. open menu.lst in your C drive with notepad in edit mode
  3. now type in:
timeout 0
default 1
title ChromiumOS
root(hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda3 rwnoresume noswap i915.modeset=1 loglevel=1 cros_debug
quiet
end
4. Save and reboot, now you will get the option to boot into Windows and Chromium OS
5. You will have to use an Ethernet cable the first time you boot into Chromium OS as it will ask your Gmail ID and password for signing in
I would like to thank Hexxeh for all his work in porting Chromium OS to laptops, desktops, etc!
Update: Our friend tfrendo has a fix for error 15. Quoting him directly from the comments section
Guys, even I encountered the error 15 but I resolved it by making a small change in menu.lst on the root parameter:
root (hd0,X)
Please note the SPACE after keyword root.
Also very important is the value of “X”. I got this from GRUB by typing the cmd “FIND” which listed all partitions.
On the kernel line the value of “sdaY” is also very important and has to be the partition called “C-ROOT”, the ext2 partition.

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