I have a laptop with Windows XP. I have Ubuntu 5.1 and 6.1 install CD's and I want to install Ubuntu in a dual boot configuration.

I tried installing the 6.1 version but it looks like all I can do is select the 'use the whole disc for Ubuntu' but I do not want to lose my XP setup.

What is the best way to go about installing Ubuntu on an XP drive??

Colin

You'll need to use a partition manager like Partition Magic to shrink the XP partition and free up some space for the Ubuntu.

Additionally I believe there is a partition manager included with Ubuntu, so possibly you could boot from the CD and use that to shrink XP, but I don't know if the Ubuntu manager can handle Windows file systems or if it is limited to Linux ones.

Its probably the easiest option to just boot direct from CD each time. This way you won't have to partition your hard drive (to install ubuntu on it) which can be tricky if you don't know what you're at. To boot from CD you have to go into your BIOS (which is the first screen you see after you power up your machine) and select 'boot from CD' as number 1 in the boot order; its probably at 'boot from hard drive' at the moment if you've got XP installed. Also, if you download any files while running ubuntu you can probably choose to store them on the hard drive or cd (if you've got space on there).

As far as I know if you partition the hd and run ubuntu, you cannot access any files on another partition (assigned to xp or whatever) unless you run xp, and vica versa. Same goes for CD boot version of ubuntu.

As far as I know if you partition the hd and run ubuntu, you cannot access any files on another partition (assigned to xp or whatever) unless you run xp, and vica versa. Same goes for CD boot version of ubuntu.

Actually that is not correct. Linux can mount and read/write/create FAT and FAT32 formatted disks and easily mount and read NTFS disks. I think NTFS disks can be written also nowadays but I am not positive since I have no use for it.

I found a copy of Partition Magic, it refused to do anything, I suspect it was trying to write to the CD but my laptop CD is read only!!

I booted from the Ubuntu CD nut I think it has the same problem- cannot write to drive D:

If I get peed of enough I will give the whole disk to Ubuntu and ditch Windows completely!!

I'm just a noob so maybe I am doing things I'm not supposed to be able to do.

I easily set up dual boot with XP and Ubuntu 8.04, which I have recently updated to 8.10. The Ubuntu 8.04 Live CD did it all for me, including making the Ubuntu partition, all I had to do was answer a few questions about how I wanted it done. I also used partition magic to make a third partition, which I made FAT 32 and I use it to store stuff I want to use with both XP (NTFS) and Ubuntu (Ext 3). When I boot in XP, it does not recognize the Ubuntu partition so I cannot do anything with that. However, when I boot in Ubuntu, I can read, write, create, move stuff around, etc and basically do whatever I want with all of the directories and files in all three partitions.

It seems to me that the Ubuntu CDs you want to use are pretty old. Why not make a new live CD with Ubuntu 8.04, which is a LTS version, and try that?

Higgy

And where do I get 8.04? I guess I could ask Ubuntu to send me some more CD's.

Downloading is impossible, it would take me at least two days!!

PM your address and I'll send you mine, next week as I can't do it this weekend.

I would like to warn you that updates can easily be 10s or sometimes even 100s of MB, so without broadband I probably wouldn't even bother with linux. I had to reinstall 8.04 once from scratch, and remember I had to wait for 262 MB of downloads before I could even finish the installation, which took over 3 hours. I can only imagine how long it would take you if you are only using dial up.

Higgy

edit, my computer has an internal dial up modem, which I was never even able to get working with Ubuntu and finally gave up. When I occassionally have to use dial up, I can only do it with XP.

Edited November 21, 200817 yr by higgy88

Have a google for dual boot xp ubuntu, there are plenty of online tutorials and its dead easy. Just be careful when you mess with the partition manager section of installation!

One thing to note - once your dual boot is going, if you upgrade Ubuntu to a new version it tends to overwrite your bootloader (thereby making XP inaccessible until you edit it to put XP back on the bootloader list). It's a good idea to make a backup of the grub configuration file. You can fix it manually pretty easily but that can be painful to figure out if you haven't done it before.