Dual Booting [fedora 10 -> Fedora 10 + Windows Xp] Any advice?

[Mordent 0]

So, after having a long series of good times with Fedora, I've decided to spend the next little while (before heading back to university) trying to get both Windows XP Home Edition and Fedora on my system in as non-destructive a way as possible.

 

My current setup is having Fedora installed and taking up the entire hard drive with its partitions (i.e. the main one (I forget what its called) and the swap partition). Correct me if I'm wrong, but it normally only takes two partitions, yes? I haven't made any special "requests" for extra, so it'll be whatever the default is. My hard drive is about 300 GB in size, and currently there's around 100 GB occupied (I've got a lot of lossless audio and a fair few videos stored on it). Ideally I'd want about 200 GB for Linux (I'm quite taken with the OS, so don't see any real need to minimise the room it has to expand) and the rest (i.e. 100 GB) for Windows XP. From a bit of reading up on this sort of thing, I gather Windows doesn't take too kindly to other OSes on the system, so before considering undertaking this task (and no, I haven't done anything to my system yet) I thought I'd get a bit of prepatory feedback and advice from you folks. What's the worst thing that could happen? Clearly I'll back all of my files up, but I'd rather not lose Fedora if possible. I've got it just the way I like it.

 

Clearly some sort of repartitioning will need to be done, and my Fedora partition would have to be shrunk to make room for Windows. What partitioning software (for Linux) would you suggest to do this with? Anything else you think might be useful?

 

I want to make sure I get this done right, as after next week (a week today) I won't have access to my Windows XP disc again, at least not for a good while (which is why Linux was installed on the entire thing in the first place, as when my computer went nuclear a while back I only had Linux available).

 

Thanks in advance!

[cemeteryrecords 0]

well, every time i've dual booted, i've always already had windows, then installed linux second, but i stil know how to do it.
First, you want to repartition fedora. I recommend Gparted (googlie it) it's a free live linux distro, made for the sole purpose of drive partioning.
download it, burn it, and boot it. now, select your drive, and you want to shrink the partition, down to your desired amount for fedora (i believe you said 200gb)
if everything goes as planned, create a new partition on the 100gb space you made (dont format it)
now reboot and go back into fedora and you wanna edit your lilo (if you're using that for your boot manager)
goto lilo.conf and edit it

boot = /dev/sdaprompttimeout = 20default=linux# linuximage = /boot/vmlinuzroot = current label = fedoraread-write## windowsother = /dev/sda2 (or whatever your's is)label = winxp#

when your done changing it, run lilo -v to save it

I think this is pretty much it, this will default to linux after 20 seconds, but of course you can change the time and default respectively to what you prefer.

then install windows.

everything should be fine, but if something doesn't work, let me know.

good luck.

BTW: Very good idea, as you said, to back everything up! I've messed up badly by not doing that before.

[Mordent 0]

well, every time i've dual booted, i've always already had windows, then installed linux second, but i stil know how to do it. First, you want to repartition fedora. I recommend Gparted (googlie it) it's a free live linux distro, made for the sole purpose of drive partioning.
download it, burn it, and boot it. now, select your drive, and you want to shrink the partition, down to your desired amount for fedora (i believe you said 200gb)
if everything goes as planned, create a new partition on the 100gb space you made (dont format it)
now reboot and go back into fedora and you wanna edit your lilo (if you're using that for your boot manager)
goto lilo.conf and edit it

Thanks for the advice, although unfortunately I use GRUB. I can't imagine the stages are too different, but I find GRUB's a bit trickier to work with from past experience (i.e. having issues last time my computer said "no"). I don't suppose anyone knows of a similar process for GRUB? Failing that, is it reasonably safe to install lilo on my system first, then faff around with partitioning?

Thanks for the help, I appreciate it.

[cemeteryrecords 0]

Not a problem. First off, You can't really install lilo and then tinker around with the partitions, unless you change lilo everytime you make a partition change. However, doing this won't mess anything up, so you're safe there. I also found a very tutorial on GRUB here: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4622
Hope this all helps.

[Mordent 0]

*bookmarks* Woohoo! I found this article an absolute age ago but could never find the damned thing again afterwards. I remember it sounding very useful, so I'll make sure I bookmark it this time.

 

Anyway, looks handy enough, although I hope you can boot GRUB from a USB drive as well as floppies, as my computer doesn't take floppy discs. I'll have a bit more of a read and tinker later on, and I'll let you know how it goes. If I don't come back in a few days, assume it went disastrously wrong and that I've wiped everything.

 

Cheers,

 

Mordent

Edited January 10, 2009 by Mordent (see edit history)

[iGuest 3]

remove fedora 9 partitions from dual boot hard diskDual Booting [fedora 10 -> Fedora 10 + Windows Xp]

Dear Sir,

I install same hard disk to windows and fedora 9.0. Now I want to remove fedora partitions from the hard disk. But I delete this partition windows allso not start. How I repair it or What is the solution? I hope your kind consideration.

Thanking you,

-reply by Channa Boyagoda

[iGuest 3]

I believe what happened was your bootlog was stored on your linux partition, which told your computer what OS to boot from and allowed you your choices.  Once that boot log has been deleted your computer does not have any instructions on which OS's are available to boot from.  If you have an XP recovery disk there is a feature in the command prompt to create a new bootlog or repair a corrupt one.  I apologize off the top of my head I don't remember the exact procedure to do this, but this should give u a direction to go in.

-reply by Chris