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Why cannot we dual boot?

I was thinking that dual booting on a single device would be a really great thing. A huge step.
Why we cannot do it?
Cannot we "emulate" partitions of the internal memory on the sdcard and then create a modified spl to boot from sdcard?
I was thinking that it is possible to make the sdcard working like internal memory..
Is it so difficult?

blackgin said:
I was thinking that dual booting on a single device would be a really great thing. A huge step.
Why we cannot do it?
Cannot we "emulate" partitions of the internal memory on the sdcard and then create a modified spl to boot from sdcard?
I was thinking that it is possible to make the sdcard working like internal memory..
Is it so difficult?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I think this would be a good idea too. have a stable boot partition, then on the second boot have our "testing" partition.
Is this even possible?

Whether or not this is possible, I don't know.
But kinda related, I would like to see a bootloader that made an "image" of the entire phone to sdcard AND would also restore the entire "image" of the phone.
Why?
It would give us an easy way to test out different roms!
You could have your stable build for regular day-to-day use, you could also "image" any other rom you install, then you could switch back and forth without the need for a computer to restore using Fastboot. Using this method, you could "image" any number of builds you wouldn't to try.
There may be a way this could be done right now, I don't know. I haven't found out how. If it's already an option, someone please point me in the right direction!

It would be very difficult cause you would have to find another OS that isn't linux based. Even with a bootloader all the files will be knocked off from the previous flash because everything in these builds are pretty much in the root folder. The OS runs on these references and if you change them the OS will not run. You would have to rework the whole OS to get this to work

Someone delete me

argh xda is so slow

It would be very difficult cause you would have to find another OS that isn't linux based. Even with a bootloader all the files will be knocked off from the previous flash because everything in these builds are pretty much in the root folder. The OS runs on these references and if you change them the OS will not run. You would have to rework the whole OS to get this to work

Booting off the sdcard could be possible but would be pointless to do.
Everytime you mount the sdcard to the computer it would crash the phone. Also, There's not really enough internal space to dual boot. 1 decent ROM barely fits on as it is.

blueheeler said:
Whether or not this is possible, I don't know.
But kinda related, I would like to see a bootloader that made an "image" of the entire phone to sdcard AND would also restore the entire "image" of the phone.
Why?
It would give us an easy way to test out different roms!
You could have your stable build for regular day-to-day use, you could also "image" any other rom you install, then you could switch back and forth without the need for a computer to restore using Fastboot. Using this method, you could "image" any number of builds you wouldn't to try.
There may be a way this could be done right now, I don't know. I haven't found out how. If it's already an option, someone please point me in the right direction!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Cyanogen mentioned he was looking into this to try implement it into his recovery image. I don't think anyone's been able to restore a complete nandroid backup outside of fastboot...yet. However people are working on it. I think it's doable.
Meltus said:
Booting off the sdcard could be possible but would be pointless to do.
Everytime you mount the sdcard to the computer it would crash the phone. Also, There's not really enough internal space to dual boot. 1 decent ROM barely fits on as it is.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe, maybe not. A second or third EXT partition on the sd card could possibly be used for a dual/tri boot enviornment. Only the FAT32 portion gets mounted when you mount through your phone. And there would be virtually no difference when mounting through ADB. Now would be a good time for those interested in persuing this notion to have a look at the data2sd thread. Sounds very possible to me.

overground said:
Maybe, maybe not. A second or third EXT partition on the sd card could possibly be used for a dual/tri boot enviornment. Only the FAT32 portion gets mounted when you mount through your phone. And there would be virtually no difference when mounting through ADB. Now would be a good time for those interested in persuing this notion to have a look at the data2sd thread. Sounds very possible to me.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
no, i'm pretty sure all partitions get mounted, they just don't show up on windows.
on linux they all appear for me when i mount the phone.
also, sorry about the triple post, dunno wtf happened there.

Debain As Primarly OS
What Ive Been wishing for is someone to make the Dream Boot straight to Debian, No android running in the background.
Then we could boot into a debian with g1 drivers (if open source) and have gpu accl. x11.
Then maybe dual-booting android.
Im willing to try to get a debian img to boot on my g1 if someone wants to tell me where I would start to even try to attempt it.

lolz
Booting straight to Debian would be cool, except there is really no use for it on our G1's. We are best off running after loading Android, although I'm sure one day we could just boot Debian. What would the point of Debian be on our G1's? I'm running Deb5 on my Dell Mini that has a 9" inch screen and can barely see text.... how in the world would this become useful on a 3" screen???

just my £0.02
there is an old saying in my country. "if you don't believe it can work, then it won't for you". that holds so true for development. yes you will make mistakes on the way. heck i'm on my fourth G1 so far (and i suspect there will be more to come!) I love this phone, and i love the fact that we as a community can build such amazing things as the hero rom for the device.
what would we have done if the first person had said the wheel was impossible? or if the first person had said that fire was impossible. or (shock horror) electricity? or television? or telephone? or GPS? or the internet?
all of those were impossible until someone worked out how to do it.
dual boot would be pheasably posible, as the device is primeraly a computer first, and then a phone second. it boots a linux kernel from the bootloader (if i am correct in my understanding) so all we would need to do is create a bootloader with a choice in it, and then direct the phone to boot a second partition from the SD card.
the phone does mount all partitions - but only if the OS understands all partitions (test it for yourself - if you have windows and apps2sd mount the partitions and then run an app from the card it still works. but it does not under linux).
to answer the what would be the point questions, what would be the point in not doing it? surely development for a device like this is all about trying stuff, and then if it doesn't work not doing the same thing again.
i believe that a second OS would boot quite comfortably on a decent SD card. not that i have this working or anything. to make the screen readable, you just use a lower resolution (320x480). i would probably not want a full-blown GUI linux anyway, what i would want from a dual-boot OS would be a working command-line debian with FULL hardware access - allowing me to really use the phone as a fully-functioning remote terminal for my server.
i recon, though, that one thing that would be absolutely amazing is being able to have a fully-portable totally reliable XDA-Developers OS on my phone.
so, why do we not just try as much as we can to get this working? how do we start?

milestone.it said:
just my £0.02
.....
so, why do we not just try as much as we can to get this working? how do we start?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Just hack the spl and flash it, but be cautionous as hell

Okay, I dont claim to know alot but I'll share my thoughts anyway
When you mount the SD all partitions get mounted, if you go into disk management in windows you can see the 'Unknown' partition if you have an ext2 partition.
Secondly, we don't really 'boot' debian, it just mounts an image file on your SD card that contains the debian binaries. As I understand it there is no reason these binaries couldn't be included in android (like busybox).
Thirdly, do we really want debian? What we need is a very light OS, android is the perfect base, take away all the gloss and its linux underneath. I love the idea of having repositories and being able to apt-get and even develop on the device.
Lastly, we're forgettign why android is such a good platform, the reason android is useful is because of the Dalvik VM, it's what allows us to make portable apps that will work on any android phone. I seriously doubt everyday users will be interested enough to learn to compile source on their phone. I've worked programming games for mobiles in J2ME and it was horrible, there was barely any portability between manufacturers, i believe android will be alot better adn from what i've seen (with people porting from other droid devices) this seems to hold true. It will be interesting to see if Android gets bloated with manufacturer specific API's like J2ME.
Also I'll just throw this out there... I'm not a fan of being tied to google, yes google helped along the way, but its not 'google android', its android. Wasn't it strange hoe Gmail worked fine, but the email app didnt? (K9 is perfect though!)

hi guys, i'm not at all a developer of any kind, i suck even at web design, but here's my thoughts expanding on the whole "what if the wheel didn't work" scenario
inventions are created by the need to do something, we need to get from A to B faster, lets make a car. we want to entertain our families in the evening, Hey look, TV. i need to tel my wife to get some milk while she's at the shop, Voila, Mobile Phone.
Basicaly the point i'm trying to make is, if somebody finds a NEED for dual boot on android, then so be it, it shall be done, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but if something is needed, then something shall come from it. we develop technology when we need to do something faster, easier, or just plain do it.
if somebody decides they NEED dual boot, i'm pretty sure they will figure out how to do it, either that or ask haykuro for some tips and alot of help, but i think he's still too busy with regular life at the minute, i'm not so sure, all i know is he's definately a legend, and maybe will want a piece of dual-boot pie

So who is the great man who want to try to do this? ;D
I offer my help, if it could be useful..

re: dual booting
would it be blasphemous to want to try out winmo 6.5 or 7 on these?

personally, i'd love to see WM on here. mainly, just so we know it's possible.
People are always slating Windows but, personally, i don't see whats wrong with it (Linux is my primary OS and always will be ). It would be nice to have say WM for work and Android for play

any news on this? I would really like to run a hero rom one day and then cupcake the next while not losing my settings...

CF card not working

I'm very sad and I'm hoping someone can help me with ANY idea that might work. I just bought a LifeView FlyPresenter CF card for my pda because I heard awesome things about it. Unfortunately any and all attempts to install the card so far have been unsuccessful with any driver version I could find. Plugging the card in hangs the pda until I remove it and soft-resetting with the card in hangs the boot process...when I remove it the thing boots normally and then gives me an error box saying it can't recognize the card (which I pulled out) and is looking for me to tell it what driver to use. I tried typing the driver name in the box but that did nothing, probably because I can't get the error box and have the card plugged in simultaneously. The Card is supposedly written for PPC 2002 and 2003 and I figured that it'd be compatible with WM6 but maybe I was mistaken....the software seemed to install normally and the app shows up on the programs list though.
So....I'm hoping somebody can help me either A) get the thing working or B) tell me how to trick the device into acting like a ppc 2003 or something crazy like that so that I can use the card in some limited way. It has a lot of awesome software and full motion video out that I want to take advantage of. Thank you for your kind support.
IPAQ 210 Enterprise
WM6 Classic (non cooked)
81 MB free RAM
39 MB free space on the device

Anybody? I'm totally helpless at this point...

hi there, the drivers are imcompatible i have a Lifview cam, its a noshow on my 6.1 custom, you need 2003/se for it to work.
Sorry
Badwolve1

Aww ****..... Is there anyway to emulate the OS on a wm6 device? I don't care how complicated or weird it is....any means of running the hardware would be better than having to sell this thing after I just bought it.

gahhhrrrlic said:
Aww ****..... Is there anyway to emulate the OS on a wm6 device? I don't care how complicated or weird it is....any means of running the hardware would be better than having to sell this thing after I just bought it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Sorry, i don't thinks its possible.

Hey have you seen on their website that they have SDK software? I just saw it now. Apparently it allows you to write drivers for whatever platform you want by simply using their dll files and writing the drivers for them. Problem is the link is 404 and I can't find the sdk anywhere else. I know they have the same software for the flycam too. Maybe if we each are able to find our respective versions of the SDK we can both use our hardware again.
Any ideas where I could find the SDK? My methods of searching for things are limited to google but you might know where else such things are likely to be found...

Badwolve1 said:
hi there, the drivers are imcompatible i have a Lifview cam, its a noshow on my 6.1 custom, you need 2003/se for it to work.
Sorry
Badwolve1
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Try this Software: http://www.wincesoft.de/html/cecam.html It may work for you.

Native android install?

I've used some of the android releases on my FUZE, but mainly stuck to the phoenix windows ROM releases, but finally switched to a captivate.
So I have this FUZE sitting here, and checking back in, I've looked at several roms, but I'm not clear on the "state of the art" in fuze/android rom development.
The single biggest question is if Android boots natively from the internal ROM yet? Or am I still stuck with downloading to SD cards, and firing off haret.exe or whatever it's replacement is?
Thanks for any pointers.

For now, microSD is the only way that has been tested and considered "safe" for our device( unless you just want a reason to chunk your device ). There are talks of NAND development for the TP/RAPH but Android is still far away from being "perfect" for non-native Android devices.
Check THIS and THIS thread for additional info

sorry, ..........

[Q] Any Win 7 ROM for SE Arc

I have a SE Arc with Android 2.3.3.
Is it possible to load Win Mobile 7 on to my Arc?
Experts, please help

I'm gunna go ahead and say ridiculously unlikely... My guess if for many of the same reasons Android is won't go on a wp7 device. y not just buy a wp7 phone?
Sent from my Samsung Focus using XDA Windows Phone 7 App

It could be doable
You'd have to be a G though, here's what I know:
With a rooted phone, busybox, and some linux skills, it is possibly to CHROOT Ubuntu, debian, mint, etc, onto the Android tree, boot it from terminal, and view the desktop with VNC (either localhost on the phone or potentially from any other machine on the subnet), like a not-so-virtual machine.
I assume that if you could partition the internal SD, and make sure android stay put on one side of that partition, there is no reason you couldn't format the other side to say NTFS or FAT32 and install anything ARMv7 friendly on there.
HOWEVER, there is no guarantee that WP7 would know how to talk to the rest of the hardware, for example, the real buttons - you know what MS are like.
Say you did manage to split your internal SD and put android in a corner, with your spare half-an-SD you could install Windows 8 (touch screen interface).. .. that'd be pretty sweet!

"You know what MS are like" is a somewhat silly statement here. The problem, as with all hardware<->OS compatibility, is drivers. Every phone uses different hardwae, and therefore requires different drivers. On a PC, there's a basic level of compatibility that is assumed for most hardware (for example, using VGA with any video card and any monitor) but phone hardware tends to be more minimal and may not contain these fallback modes (even if you wanted to use them), and phone ROMs are minimal in size to allow the maximum space for user data (which means they can't stick a wide variety of drivers into the ROM - they just put in the ones specific to that hardware).

sreejithkm said:
I have a SE Arc with Android 2.3.3.
Is it possible to load Win Mobile 7 on to my Arc?
Experts, please help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No. like explained in above post.

sreejithkm said:
I have a SE Arc with Android 2.3.3.
Is it possible to load Win Mobile 7 on to my Arc?
Experts, please help
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
1st. its not windows mobile 7, its windows phone 7. and if you make an mistake even in the start IN THE NAME of the OS, than whats the matter if it possible for you or not? you must first have some general information about windows PHONE 7, that you have this wish to have it on a Sony E. Arc. you can not have something that you even now its name, sorry!
and 2nd. wp7 can not be flashed on a device like SE arc, first the display on the long side 54px bigger than standard, you have a external micro SD which is not enabled in wp7.
the only two things that match are the 1ghz proc.and the GPU adreno 205. but i dont know which snapdragon processor this is and not all are supported even if they have 1ghz or more.

If they share they same omap/armv7, surely its doable.. Everything is doable! I shall talk to some lecturers n see what the word is after easter/exams. As implied above by all though, itd be no rookie task
Sent from my LT18i using XDA

How to backup developer unlocked WP7 with Win7x64 and the latest Zune version?

I'd like to know how to backup developer unlocked WP7 with Win7x64 computer and the latest Zune version?
I've now tried:
- WP7 Easy Updater -> didn't work. Gives me an error message and leads me to Microsoft's support site.
- Windows Phone 7 backup v.1.9 -> didn't work. Gives mw an error message "the input string was not given in the correct order..."
I've tried Zune4.7 dll for the later one -> same thing, didn't work
Is there a way to make a full backup of your unlocked/developer unlocked Windows Phone 7 with any (other) software? I'd need to replace the micro-SD card of my Dell Venue Pro from 32Gb to 64Gb and wouldn't like to loose the music I have in the isolated storages of some Marketplace apps. I've even tried Isolated Storage Spy tool but it doesn't allow to access to the isolated storages of Marketplace apps.
Any help is highly appreciated! Thanks a lot in advance!

Sensonic said:
I'd like to know how to backup developer unlocked WP7 with Win7x64 computer and the latest Zune version?
I've now tried:
- WP7 Easy Updater -> didn't work. Gives me an error message and leads me to Microsoft's support site.
- Windows Phone 7 backup v.1.9 -> didn't work. Gives mw an error message "the input string was not given in the correct order..."
I've tried Zune4.7 dll for the later one -> same thing, didn't work
Is there a way to make a full backup of your unlocked/developer unlocked Windows Phone 7 with any (other) software? I'd need to replace the micro-SD card of my Dell Venue Pro from 32Gb to 64Gb and wouldn't like to loose the music I have in the isolated storages of some Marketplace apps. I've even tried Isolated Storage Spy tool but it doesn't allow to access to the isolated storages of Marketplace apps.
Any help is highly appreciated! Thanks a lot in advance!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've just gone through the onerous process of trying to export my SMS messages from an original HTC Trophy (WP7.0) with Chevron unlock.
Things like SMSBackup don't work (target a higher version of Windows Phone, and hacking the xap manifest at best got the app deployed but not running). Backup programs like the ones you listed did nothing. Something called WPV App Data Backup at least connected and created a bunch of folders but they were all empty.
In the end (after literally years of on-and-off attempts) I gave up on the SMS messages and let Zune do its update. Turns out that Zune does a backup to "C:\Users\JohnCitizen\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Phone Update" (or your equivalent) before it applies any updates. It's not a FULL backup in the sense that I'd understand the term, but it includes the isolated storage of apps which seems to be your main concern.
If your phone is already up to date I'm not sure if there's a way to fake an update or force Zune to do a backup as if it were preparing for an update but that might be your best bet.
Side-note: the pleasant surprise was that I didn't need the backups anyway. I've applied 5 cumulative updates to bring the phone to WP7.10.7720 and it still has the SMS messages and app data (meaning I could apply the interop unlock and get my SMS messages out with SMSBackup after all!).

FerretallicA said:
I've just gone through the onerous process of trying to export my SMS messages from an original HTC Trophy (WP7.0) with Chevron unlock.
Things like SMSBackup don't work (target a higher version of Windows Phone, and hacking the xap manifest at best got the app deployed but not running). Backup programs like the ones you listed did nothing. Something called WPV App Data Backup at least connected and created a bunch of folders but they were all empty.
In the end (after literally years of on-and-off attempts) I gave up on the SMS messages and let Zune do its update. Turns out that Zune does a backup to "C:\Users\JohnCitizen\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Phone Update" (or your equivalent) before it applies any updates. It's not a FULL backup in the sense that I'd understand the term, but it includes the isolated storage of apps which seems to be your main concern.
If your phone is already up to date I'm not sure if there's a way to fake an update or force Zune to do a backup as if it were preparing for an update but that might be your best bet.
Side-note: the pleasant surprise was that I didn't need the backups anyway. I've applied 5 cumulative updates to bring the phone to WP7.10.7720 and it still has the SMS messages and app data (meaning I could apply the interop unlock and get my SMS messages out with SMSBackup after all!).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the advice but the phone is already WP7.8862 so it cannot be updated anymore. But I've tried both of the aforementioned apps and neither of them seem to work
Another possibility I've been thinking is a sort of "blind copy" of micro-SD if that's possible if the backup of Marketplace apps (and their isolated storages) is not possible. Well, I'm willing to try just about everything to save the music that I have in my phone. It'd be really painstaking and time consuming to download all that music (once again) to my phone after replacing the micro-SD card.
Speaking about your phone, why haven't you installed a custom ROM to it? I've installed custom ROMs to my HTC 7 Pro (Dynamics 2.2) and to my Nokia Lumias (Lumiatrix, don't remember the version right now). And my LG Quantum I've unlocked with the registry code. Makes a life a whole lot easier. Too bad no-one has found a way to port a custom ROM to Dell Venue Pro since I already would've done it. Well, developer unlock will do then...

Sensonic said:
Speaking about your phone, why haven't you installed a custom ROM to it? I've installed custom ROMs to my HTC 7 Pro (Dynamics 2.2) and to my Nokia Lumias (Lumiatrix, don't remember the version right now). And my LG Quantum I've unlocked with the registry code. Makes a life a whole lot easier. Too bad no-one has found a way to port a custom ROM to Dell Venue Pro since I already would've done it. Well, developer unlock will do then...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Originally because I wanted to backup/export my SMS messages. Now I've finally worked that out I don't really care about the phone. Windows Phone is a horrible pile of sh** compared to what Windows Mobile was, much less what Android is now, is so I have no desire to waste any more time on it.

FerretallicA said:
Originally because I wanted to backup/export my SMS messages. Now I've finally worked that out I don't really care about the phone. Windows Phone is a horrible pile of sh** compared to what Windows Mobile was, much less what Android is now, is so I have no desire to waste any more time on it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah, you're right. Android is much closer to Windows Mobile than Windows Phone is.
But the reason why Windows Phone and iPhone are so closed systems, is their information security.
Android is quite open system compared to those two aforementioned ones.
I do have some Android devices but I've still decided to stick with Windows Phone. It's the best (well at least for me) OS for business purposes.
Just looking for a Windows Phone 8.x device with the physical QWERTY and possiblity to jailbreak it...
Back to subject: I'd really appreciate if someone could give me a hint how to get those two already mentioned backup apps to work with the latest Zune version, WP7.8 & WIN7 x64.

RE: SMS BACKUP Application
i need SMS backup xap file for lumia 710 dev unlocked mobile.
software version 7.8, make: nokia.
i cannot flash or try interop unlock methods, i tried loading xap files by removing INTEROPSERVICE in capabilities, app loaded successfully, but raised exception when app is loaded n crashed.
please suggest if any registry/policy editing steps through windows phone device manager or if any steps...
Any help is highly appreciated! Thanks a lot in advance!