How to dual boot Linux and Windows XP (Linux installed first) -- the step-by-step guide with screenshots

Ubuntu Tutorials:

It has been so long since I've dared install XP. I didn't realize how outdated it looks compared to the Ubuntu installer!

...just an observation.

ks (New user):

How about a competition where the one who can bag windows the most wins? This really craps me. Just use Linux and be happy - that's enough. Or even better, use them both and use them both well. That's what I try to do, and thanks to this howto now I can do both on my new computer. I'm no expert and I was very grateful for this howto to get XP running. It's a good OS. I would even say there are things I like about it (gasp!).

If you think you can do better, do better. We'll check it out.

ks (New user):

...just an observation

ks (New user):

How about a competition where the one who can bag windows the most wins? This really craps me. Just use Linux and be happy - that's enough. Or even better, use them both and use them both well. That's what I try to do, and thanks to this howto now I can do both on my new computer. I'm no expert and I was very grateful for this howto to get XP running. It's a good OS. I would even say there are things I like about it (gasp!).

If you think you can do better, do better. We'll check it out.

What? (New user):

problem...
when i get to the "install xp" step i get a message something like - "windows cannot find any installed hdds"...

any ideas?
thanks!

marinegundoctor (New user):

Quoting What?:
"windows cannot find any installed hdds"...any ideas?thanks!


SAY, if you (or anyone else) is having this error with XP, then you will need to find and download the SATA drivers for your disk. I had this prob and got them from gateway.com. press F6 during the initial setup of XP, when prompted to do so, to intstall 3rd party drivers.

to ubuntu? (New user):

I burnt a windows xp cd as a .gbi file using gburner but the computer wont recognize it as a boot disc and loads grub normally, the boot priority is set to the cd drive first, can anyone help?

Tom:

Never ever use sudo to open a graphical application, use gksudo or, in KDE, kdesu. Using sudo could mess up your ~/.ICEauthority

Dave:

You guys are cool as for creating these guides. Looking forward to the XP to XP+Linux guide.

Thanks

Dave

cthisbear:

Come on. How about getting on board to Puppy
Linux Live CDs.
Australian
Worlds fastest...runs in memory
7 official releases in 2006
All different Puppy derivatives from 12 megs
to 500 megs
Different language versions
Latest official Puppy 2.14 is 87megs
Recycles the oldest computers..runs the newest

Instead of Me Too lazy journalism..give your readers the worlds best Live boot CD.

Made in outback Western Australia by
Barry Kauler....homepage

http://www.puppyos.com/
http://www.puppylinux.org/wikka/LatestNews

Versions of Puppy

http://puppylinux.org/wikka/VersionsPuppy

Regards Chris.

R Gersbach:

The litter is too big. 6 versions? Why not one version that is supported for a number of years and works out of the box, like Windows. Hopefully Dell AU will sell Linux on machines in Australia at the right price. And my broadband supplier will support it.

Brett:

Why don't I have the ability to right click and manage flags in GNOME Partition editor?

Freddy:

how come I don't have the option to right click and manage flags in Gnome Partition editor?

Dalobo:

When I right click on any partition, I do not have the manage flags option...

How do I get this? I downloaded the latest version of the OS 6.10

I see I am not the only person asking this question. Us Windows users who are slowing making the jump to Linux need some help here...

My windows install is on the C drive as well.

So how about a response? Live CD and no manage flags there...!

HELP!

new ubuntu:

ok so i did the partition then when I get to XP everything is working fine then after it is done installing its stuff it says starting up XP the screen goes black for like a second and then comes back with screen where you chooseto install and my keyboard has bombed out and it doesn't work. Any suggestions please post.

nes:

me too, any suggestions ?

Anonymous69:

thats cos you copied and pasted the active chainloader together. check the pic underneath. thats how it should be. check it

leode1 (New user):

Hey, I have windows XP Home installed on C drive. I have 5gb D drive and ubuntu-7.10-desktop-i386.iso. Can I just go ahead and install it on drive D? Can help with any instruction set for it? Please mail me on see_1ani@rediffmail.com

jud:

You saved me!! I had gone thru this dual boot installation all on my own.... until I realized that I was stuck booting into Windows and couldn't boot into Ubuntu! Your GRUB bootloader workaround is fantastic! THANKYOU

Sidewinder:

Thanks a lot for your guide, it all worked like a charm. Even I, an absolute noob, could do this.

jamie:

i have not yet installed windows, but in the instructions above, in the section 'GRUB timeout'.

it talks about being able have xp as the default, and it say, 'replace the value' what value do i replace it with.

currently i have ubuntu 6.10 installed on my laptop, and i want to dual boot windows xp for the first time.

assuming i follow the instructions, and i am up to that bit, HOW WHAT VALUE DO I REPLACE 0 WITH?

if anyone can help me out i would greatly appreciate it.

thanks jamie....

Koji:

My steps were a little different, when I first installed Edgy I created a partition for Windows to reside in at a later date, so windows is hd(0,0)

After installing Windows XP MCE, the first time, the system drive was F:\. I then re-installed XP MCE from scratch to the same partition (deleting the original installation), and the system drive for windows is now C:.

Dual boot works great, hd(0,0) = Windows, hd(0,1) = edgy.

Vimal George:

What can I say?

You guys just wrote the Superlative article on the topic thats been bugging me.

I'm a stickler for performance. I don't care much for windows except for the occassionaly must-have win32 app without *nix equiavalents(the list approaches NiL as i speak!)

The thought of Win XP being at the high-performance end of my 100GB hard disk irks me no end. I'd rather my Ubuntu workstation install reside there.
Win XP is about to be banished to the last 6GB of my Disk(muhahaha take that! B1LL)

This approach also allows for more flexible partitioning strategies such as a Linux Swap partition mounted at /dev/hda2 right after the "/" partition for performance reasons(i.e READ Disk access times and seek latency Numbers)

Also keeping a common "/home" mounted partition is a good idea for organizing your personal data with redundancy.

Plus all I have to do to get access to my
"/home" partition under XP is to use the Fs-driver Ext2 Kernel Filesystem extensions in XP)
www.fs-driver.org
anyway
All in all.. a very whole-some article. Keep it coming. I'm now a fan :-)

Suggestions:
An edit could be added to include the taxonomy for x,y in the grub(x,y)commands mentioned in your tutorial. The numbering scheme there starts from hd0 ; unlike
/dev/hdaX, where hda1 is always first.

Another user:

This how to guide is very flawed. Like several other people, I don't seem to have the manae flags in my menu. Now my Ubuntu install is dead.

Note to the author: Put in some updates, or at the very least some alternate options to fix the boot record. I am not sure if your live CD is older, and still has the option, or if you are using a different version of GPARTED. Get your stuff updated please!

pbplayer

Jonathan:

Thanks man! I followed your instructions to the letter, and they worked without a single flaw. I'm on XP and Feisty.

Thanks again!

Daniel Tolbert:

I didn't have the 'Flags' option on my boot CD either, but i just went to gparted's website and they have a LIVE CD that works just as well. So if you get to that point and don't know what to do just goto http://gparted.sourceforge.net/ and you should be able to get everything sorted out from there.

Martin:

I want to dual-boot from an existing XP setup, but your link at the top of the article "how to dual-boot Linux with XP, with XP installed first" appears to be dead ... it loops back to this page in Groundhog-Day fashion.

Dan Warne:

Hi Martin, apologies for that. It's fixed now. Here's the link .

Augusto:

I bought the latest issue of "apc" mainly because I am interested in installing
Linux in my PC. I followed your instructions, extracted Ubuntu 7.04
into my harddrive and then I burn a CD with the ISO image (about 700 MB).

Unfortunatelly my PC didn't boot from the CD (I did change the ''Bios" to make it
boot from the CD) and nothing happens! my PC is a Dell Dimension 5150 running XP.

Can anyone sugest a solution to this problem?

Thanks,

Augusto

Bazza:

The checksum probably failed. Before burning the next CD use checksum to verify that the contents are correct.

Toosmoky:

"There are ways to make the Ubuntu partition bootable while still using XP’s bootloader in the MBR. However this is fiddly and involves using FAT32 partitions"

Bzzzzt! A FAT32 partition is not necessary. I've set up many XP/Linux dual boot systems using the NT bootloader off an NTFS partition. I currently run a XP/Ubuntu Feisty system with no FAT partitions within cooee.

Although one can set it up manually, the easiest way is to use bootpart. Either LILO or GRUB can be used and both work without any drama at all.

One advantage is that if you select the linux partition at bootup then decide you want Windows instead, you just choose windows when you get to the linux bootloader, thus reloading the NT bootloader again.

Hugh Pearse:

I followed these steps exactly and got XP working but I have a large problem.

When i try to install my drivers they all try to install to C:\\ and windows detected my other partitions so they were named C:\\ etc and my windows installed as G:\\.

When i tried to install my Modem Driver it just site there looking for C:\\.

Is there a way of installing windows so it doesnt detect the other Ubuntu partitions????

that way i can have my C:\\

From,
Hugh Pearse

DG:

i've downloaded and burned the GParted Live CD but when i try booting the system with it, i only get a Grub prompt, what to do?

Keari:

Hi,

When I went to modify the Boot Menu, the menu.lst was blank... I did everything you said before that that pertained to reinstalling GRUB to MBR.

Flyingbear:

I got the same initial result of a blank MENU.1st page. That's because there was no existing file called menu.1st.

I had a flash of inspiration and went back to gedit /boot/grub/menu.LST and VOILA! everything was where it should be.

Do note the post as to the correct format for the MAKEACTIVE command... Use the example in the LOWER WINDOW as you cannot string it together as the upper window suggests.

Good luck.

keith:

When installing windows make sure you have a cd with service pack 2. If you don't, windows will not recognize there is any free space on the drive and will say it's 1 large unknown partition.

joey:

I thought that I had followed these instructions exactly, and everything seemed to be working, until the very end. When I chose 'Windows XP' from the menu to run it an error came up that read

"Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format"

I am not sure what I should do here! If anyone knows what I have done wrong, or how to fix this problem it would be greatly appreciated!!

Dan:

I have this same problem. Has anyone answered this?
Thanks!

Bionicbone:

Someone please answer. I have a Vista (installed 1st) - Ubuntu (installed 2nd) - XP config now. Vista and Ubunto are fine but I really can't get XP to boot. Strangly if a set XP as (hd0,0) in Grub my Acer XP recovery boots just fine so I reckon I am almost there.
P.S. My first XP boot error was no NLTDR. I found the XP installation had placed these in C:\ (Vista Installation). Moving these from C: to E: (XP instalation) soved that prob.

CalvinK (New user):

I had Error 13 as well then i figured out the problem: you have to name the right partition the XP is on. My problem was I forgot about the "swap" partition which was recommended when I installed Ubuntu... therefore it makes XP on the 3rd partition, or hd(0,2) instead of hd(0,1)
hd(0,1) = 1st hard drive, 2nd partition
hd(0,2) = 1st hard drive, 3rd partition ("1st" starts at 0)
hopes this helps

Ron Lankshear:

Thank You - your steps are very good and I was able to get exactly what you said above.

XP now is default boot.

The other way round XP adding Linux failed. All was well but Ubuntu boot failed

run_progess `/sbin/modprobe` abnormal exit

https://launchpad.net/bugs/84964
does not seem to be a fix.

Left me with an unbootable machine - so I reformatted drive and installed Ubuntu 704.
and followed your steps above to have Dual boot working great.
I'd suggest a warning on your XP to Linux.

I got to do this as my OLD HD failed and after I put a new one - neither XP or my Macbook could read the bad drive.

Ubuntu 704 LiveCD could and was able to recover 99% without resort to backups which were not that current.

So I am a happy with Ubuntu and some things it can do BUT there is a lot I still need XP for - Scanners printers etc

Ron

The Penguin (Cornerstone member):

Which printer are you using?

noone:

Very good guide, saved me from trouble - I installed XP after Ubuntu without checking first how to make both work - Good Job!

Anonymous101:

everything was going great untill i typed in

"sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.LST"

there is no text

Spooter:

Brillent guide, printed it out followed each step then finished with a nice dual boot system of Xbuntu and Windows.

Anyone know what happens if I assign the Windows XP drive a new drive letter such as c: rather than f:?

comintno2:

I have just started, and I am faced with 3 partitions - Which one do I choose?
/dev/sda1 Fat16 54mib
/dev/sda2 Fat32 2.0gib
/dev/sda3 ext3 196.mib

Please tell me which is the one to resize?

The Penguin (Cornerstone member):

What size is the disk?

1420:

using a 1420N dell laptop with ubuntu 7.04 pre-installed. Partition 1 (primary) Utility Partition (UP) n/a 32 MB
Partition 2 (primary) Reinstall Partition (CP) n/a 2 GB
Partition 3 (primary) Linux /boot 200 MB
Partition4 (extended) Extended n/a Swap + rest of disk
Partition 5 (logical) Swap n/a (1.3 x RAM) + 10 MB
Partition 6 (logical) Linux / Rest of disk

particularly I need to know where make the partition (tried to make a another partition 7 that was unallocated 20GB made with gpart live cd that was under the extended and made from the partition 6 "Rest of disk" but when i tried to load windows xp sp 2 cd it could not read the hd. I took the flag off the boot drive as well.

Mat:

I did everything following this tutorial and now if I try and select Windows Xp from the boot menu, I get

"Starting up

Error 8: Kernel must be loaded before booting

Press any key to continue"

And it wont load. How do I fix this?

Brian Huang:

It is not a good idea to install Windows onto a drive not labeled as C. Use spfdisk to hide Linux partitions before installing Windows.

j95:

the line
makeactivechainloader +1

should be:
makeactive
chainloader +1

That's how your instructions worked for me, at least ;)

Flappz:

Hi Everyone.
I seem to be having a problem. I am using Linux Mint, a dirivitive of Kubuntu, I had GParted and I downloaded Ubuntu, and tried to do this with both, I even installed GParted in my Mint OS to see what I was doing wrong.
I followed the tutorial line by line, I have a 300 Gig ATA drive, I have 120 gig as a fat32 storage part. and I split the Mint Part. into 2 90 gig Parts. so I can install XP along side Mint. When I insert my XP disk, SP1 by the way, it will only reconize the 120 Gig storage Part. The Mint and the new Part for XP will not show up. I have gone with Ubuntu, Mint & GParted to make sure I had the partition formatted as both FAT32 and NTFS and it will not show up.
any Ideas My Friends?
Thanks Flappz

mathiasv:

To make my dual boot install, I deviated from the guide above by:

* I could not manage flags either in ubuntu-6.06.1-desktop-i386.iso, so I had to use gparted-livecd-0.3.4-10.iso for that.

* After doing: sudo grub, root (hd0,0), setup (hd0), I only got a black screen with an underscore in upper left corner. But I could boot linux when I re-installed grub;
grub-install /dev/hda
before setting it up as described.

* As is already pointed out the lines in menu.lst have to be:
makeactive
chainloader +1

It seems to work just fine now, at last, but my windoze partition is set as bootable according to fdisk -l. But it works:-) Thanks for the guide.

zoso375:

Can anyone confirm/deny that this guide will work on 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)? Will I have to wait and periodically check for the updated article? I miss my ABC/NBC online shows!

Ciesson:

I've got this to work with Gutsy Gibbon (7.10).
Also for those of you who get the balnk menu.lst files, REBOOT your pc first!

sjaeger172004:

How do I get the boot loader for Fedora Core 8 to see my Windows XP Pro installation my set up is fedora is separately installed on a 40gb ata hard drive and my windows is on my 200gb sata drive which the drive is partitioned into 2 1 is windows and program and the second partition has my installation files, music and data It will not let give me the choice of booting into windows while the fedora hard drive is connected. PLEASE HELLPPPP!

Andy:

Good stuff...I have alot of dev experience under my belt, but it's refreshing to come back to something that just works...cheers!!!

Bohemien:

I have a new 80GB harddrive nothing on it. I want a dual boot system with XP and Linux. What would be best for me to install first?

mm_vr:

You should definitely install WinXP first. It will be a whole lot easier. Just have a look at the "Dual-booting XP and Linux with XP installed first" guide.

Manish Singh:

Excellent! This works perfect. I had Ubuntu 7.04 only on my laptop and I was planning to wipe it all up so that I could install Windows XP to play Grand Theft Auto SA.

Since, I had made this system from scratch to a very nice level, it was quite painful to remove it all just for one game. WINE works for most of other windows games on Linux but GTA SA so I had no choice.

Finally, I came across this guide and just followed the directions. To my surprise, it works great. The only thing which I needed to take care about was to install XP on the primary partition as the XP installer didn't allow installing itself on a logical partition.

Yes, it's much easier to have Windows XP installed first and then Linux however, there are quite a large number of folks which have Linux as the primary Operating System on their box and this guide is really a gift for them.

Thanks again. Keep up the good work.

-Mann

dabar:

Windows boot choice won't work

I have Ubuntu 7.10 installed in sda2 (ext3) into a 9gig partition which was an attempt to not affect the first portion of the disk I had WindowsXP already installed in (which was virused)..I probably overlapped that windowsXP partition which doesn't give me a good feeling about files I was trying to keep (that free space outside, or before of ubunto became unallocated). I installed another version of windows XP over which ended up being /dev/sda1 into 30gigs of space, (there's 50gigs unallocated in the middle of the two).

I followed everything here except after the "find /boot/grub/stage1" returned "(hd0,1). I still had to run "setup (hd0)" because trying to do "setup (hd0,1)" would tell me it failed, I'm not clear all the way as to what I'm doing. Also when I went to boot up Ubuntu, on the menu it was trying to boot "(hd0,2)" So I changed those in the menu.lst and did some experimenting of what "hd" to try to get windows to run under and nothing's worked to get windows to boot up correctly off the list. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Andrew:

Good guide. Very easy to follow. I got freaked out part way through when I realized that gparted could take hours to shrink my partition. You may want to have mentioned that it takes at least an hour to shrink a 110gb partition to 20gb. Took me 2.5 hours.
Good stuff though, Linux is the future, but I still have programs from the past. I'm chained to XP for the time being.

Juan:

does this also work with the Eee PC?? Can you do that using an external hardrive??

rudecam:

i have been able to dual boot XP and linux without any problems. my laptop worked like this for about a week. today i boot up and the grub doesn't give me the option to load windows. i check with gparted and Xp is still there.

any suggestions?
thx
http://img2.freeimagehosting.net/image.php?b9818d50f0.jpg

Hamza Alhalayqa:

great efforts, thanks .

I've tried that, it works fine with me .

Thanks,

iand (New user):

After several different attempts, this one works well. I have the Duel-Boot (Linux 7.10/Windows XP) networked to one running Vista, can anyone give me some tips on networking with Linux?

ryanh (New user):

Thank you very much for such a straightforward and concise article. I got all this done within 2 hours.

Great job!

steele (New user):

when I type in find /boot/grub/stage1 it says hd0,5 instead of hd0,0 is this just because I have my home partition seperate from my ubuntu system files? Also will I have to change the setup hd to something like hd6?

steele (New user):

when I type in find /boot/grub/stage1 it says hd0,5 instead of hd0,0 is this just because I have my home partition seperate from my ubuntu system files? Also will I have to change the setup hd to something like hd6?

steele (New user):

When I type in find /boot/grub/stage1 it comes out to be hd0,5 is this just because my home partition is separate from my ubuntu system files? And also in the next step will I have to change the numbers to say root (hd0,6) and then setup (hd6)?

B Suh (New user):

One step that I needed to take before the "find /boot/grub/stage1" was "root (hd0,0)"

If I didn't I would get an Error 12 from GRUB ("Invalid device requested.)

Thanks for the article. XP is running well.

B Suh (New user):

One step that I needed to take before the "find /boot/grub/stage1" was "root (hd0,0)"

If I didn't I would get an Error 12 from GRUB ("Invalid device requested.)

Thanks for the article. XP is running well.

B Suh (New user):

Hi, in the GRUB step (after booting up with the Ubuntu LiveCD, after completing gparted boot flags and after "sudo grub") I had to type in "root (hd0,0)" or else I got a ERROR 12 before doing "find /boot/grub/stage1"

Thank you for this article. I can run XP for Photoshop CS3 :)

sinasa2 (New user):

I had windows xp installed first, then installed ubuntu, now i want to install windows xp again. if i do that it'll overwrite my boot. so what shall i do? please contact me at sinasa2@yahoo.com

free2useemail (New user):

I am going to give this a try, know one said if this works. Anyway, it does look like it is a lot of work, but Ubuntu is not really something I could switch too for good. OH, a question. How much graphic memory do you need to run Ubuntu's eyecandy? I am getting a new graphic card soon, so I am not sure what to get.

MikeG (New user):

During the XP install, if you create the partition in the blank space and then F3 out of the installation, when you restart the installation the new partition is assigned to drive C.

scooby (New user):

ATTENTION: ONLY ATTEMPT THIS ON A NEW INSTALLATION OF LINUX, OR ON A SYSTEM THAT YOU HAVE SUFFICIENTLY BACKED UP. Unless, of course you don't care about losing data.
Installing Windows XP after installing Linux had disastrous results for me. I actually installed XP first on a 10GB partition of a 350GB drive. After getting it set up, I installed Mandriva Linux 2007. After some months I tried to get back into XP via GRUB, but couldn't load it back up (don't remember the error). So I thought I would try reinstalling XP. I booted up with the Windows XP installation CD, accepted the license, etc. When I got to the partition screen, XP setup only showed 1 partition of 127GB rather than what should have shown: 10GB(XP),10GB(/),1.5GB(Swap),300GB+(/home). I rebooted to try to get back into Linux, but it was gone. And not only that, but almost all music, videos, pictures, documents, etc. I am still trying to figure out how to get my data back. Yes, shame on me for not having backups, but if I had a large enough disk to back up everything to, I would have just done RAID 1 and had 2 disks unrecoverable.

BOTTOM LINE: Do this only on a new install.

What? (New user):

Problem...
when i get to the "install xp" step i'm getting a message something like "windows cannot find any installed hdds"...

any suggestions?
thanks!

What? (New user):

problem...
when i get to the "install xp" step i get a message something like - "windows cannot find any installed hdds"...

any ideas?
thanks!

theumang (New user):

Hi All!!

any hints about dual booting Ubuntu (Hardy heron) and leopard ?

Leopard worked fine when that was the only operating system on the computer..
after I installed the Ubuntu, leopard was not being recognized by the grub.

I have edited the grub (source - http://www.howtoforge.com/working_with_the_grub_menu) and managed to change the background too, however when I choose Leopard to boot from, it comes up with the error - Error 12 : Invalid device requested.

This is the sudo fdisk -l result..

umang@umang:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for umang:

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00074fb8

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 2188 17575078+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 2189 26511 195374497+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 * 2189 26511 195374466 af Unknown

How do I go about fixing this error ?

Thanks
Umang

PS: do not have / want windows on my computer.

samir (New user):

How can i install windows XP, when I have installed LINUX (Fedora 7) with GRUB bootloader overwriting the windows bootloader. Now I can not boot my Windows XP CD.Now I am totally helpless please help me.
PLEASE HELP...

Ximpans (New user):

Xp first, no noubt – that will spare you trouble. See the Howto on the matter.

Felix Rizo Patron (New user):

Hi everybody! I never tried Linux but I now bought a notebook and I would like to try it. The Notebook (Lenovo 3000 n200) has no system at the moment. What is the best to do? I first install Linux, first windows xp? with dual boot, with virtual machine? in the same partition?
Thanks very much for the eventual response, Felix

toanaruto (New user):

when i type in:
root (hd0,0)
and then
setup (hd0)
it says cannot mount parition


and everytime i press tab when i type root (hd0,1) or any other number for 1 it says selected disc does not exist error 21

Pavan (New user):

If you have a SATA or SCSI disk, you may have to use sd0 in place of hd0.

Pavan (New user):

toanaruto, are you trying to boot into Windows or Linux?

if you want to boot into Windows,
on grub prompt, say

rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

If you have a SATA or SCSI disk, you may have to use sd0 in place of hd0.

Pavan (New user):

I agree that bootloaders shipped with Linux (esp. Grub) are far more powerful than outdated bootloaders shipped with MS Windows.

One more annoying thing about MS Windows installation is, it simply over writes existing MBR. So I decided to setup my box to boot Linux using Windows bootloader itself. A sub-optimal but trouble free solution.

You can read about it at http://bkpavan.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/how-to-boot-linux-using-windows-bootloader-xp/

andy (New user):

Well, I tried this and once the popped in the XP cd, the installation said "Windows cannot detect any hard drive on your computer" and the only option it gave me was to quit installation by pressing F3. So much for Windows!!

LesterAr (New user):

Hi! I´m having the same problem. Did you get to solve it? How did you dit it? Thanks!

LesterAr (New user):

Quoting andy:
Well, I tried this and once the popped in the XP cd, the installation said "Windows cannot detect any hard drive on your computer" and the only option it gave me was to quit installation by pressing F3. So much for Windows!!

Hi Andy! I´m having the same problem. Did you get to solve it? How did you do it? Thanks!

MartusX (New user):

Hi,

I spent last few nights trying to install Windows XP into a partition on a hard disk populated with my personal data and functional Linux installation. I wanted grub to be my boot loader and Windows and Linux dual booting capability. My populated disk precluded me from wiping the disk and starting with XP installation followed by Linux installation, which seems to be a less tricky way. My way wasn't as straightforward as I had wished but in the end I succeeded so decided to share my experience. I am writing the following text as if you, the reader, were trying to follow my steps.

Problems:
=======
These were the major problems I faced:
1) The Windows XP installation CD would boot but a second later the process would blank the screen and freeze after saying something like "Setup is examining your hardware configuration".
2) The XP overwrote my MBR and partition table and totally screwed it.
3) After XP installation Windows wouldn't boot.

Preparation:
=========
First of all if you want to embark on a similar adventure have your Linux rescure CD handy and print out your partition table on a paper. Basically something like:

# fdisk -l | lp

If you had a working grub in your MBR and want to have it there event after the XP install back it up:

# dd if=/dev/ of=/boot/grubMBR.bin bs=512 count=1

Note that it will include the partition table for the four primary partitions, which will also be restored when restoring the grub MBR.


Solution:
=======
1) The first problem was because there were existing Linux partitions on the HDD where I was installing. The first one was the /boot partition for grub. The second one for XP and there were many more (14 altogether most logical partitions in extended partition). To workaround this I had to hide all the other paritions from the XP installer, even the existing vfat ones as I wanted to be sure that the installed XP sees the second partition as "C:". The hiding trick was to set the partition types to 0 in fdisk during XP install and revert it afterwards.
This allowed the XP install to progress into the next stage where it saw many partitions as Unused or Empty. The next challenge was to pick the right one for the XP installation and avoid overwitting other partitions. I could distunguish it by its size. If I couldn't do it I would set the type of that partition to 7 (HPFS/NTFS) which should let that partition to stand out from the others. It would say Corrup or Unformated or something along these lines. After choosing the partition the installation went smoothly.

2) After the XP installation the system was booting straight into XP. I wanted to restore the vfat and Linux partitions hidden during step 1) and make grub the MBR owner driving the boot process. So I rebooted into Linux Rescue CD and started fdisk only to realise what damage the XP had done to the partition table. It was chaos. There were two extended partitions instead of one, some partitions were duplicated, some missing, some had incorrect and overlapping boundaries. It was totally screwed. But fortunately only the partition table was screwed not the data in the partitions themselves !
But since I had the partition layout and the grub MBR from the Prepearation step I wasn't lost.
I restored the partition table by hand according to the printout I had earlier by using fdisk. I deleted all the partitions in the partition table, and then recreated them to the original specification. This allowed me to mount the /boot partition containing grubMBR.bin and restore the grub MBR:

# dd if=/boot/grubMBR.bin of=/dev/ bs=512 count=1

As I mentioned before this command restores the partition table for the four primary partitions to the state before the XP installation. So next it was time to set the partition type for the XP partition to 7 (HPFS/NTFS) some FAT32 type depending on your choice during the install. The active boot flag on the XP partition should be set also at this point although I am not sure if it is necessary. Grub doesn't seem to need it but I haven't tried if XP boots without it.
At this point grub was back after rebooting and I could choose whether to boot Linux or Windows XP. I had to add the Windows XP entry to the grub.conf file (title WinXP; rootnoverify (hd0,1); chainloader +1) but that was described many times elsewhere.

3) The last hurdle was that the Windows XP wasn't booting. Blank screen followed by freeze. The remedy was simple but it took me a long time to realise what the root cause was. All this hiding partitions business in step one made the XP installer believe it was installing into the first partition (counting from one) whereas in fact it was in the second partition. So I had to update the C:\boot.ini in the XP partition accordingly. Note that unlike disks the partitions in boot.ini count from one so I had to specify two:
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(2)\WINDOWS
To actually be able to edit this file I had to mount the NTFS partition in writeable mode. I used the ntfs-3g package to do it. Please find it described elsewhere.

The quest was over, sigh. I hope some will find my notes useful.

cramesh_2010 (New user):

Hi

bartolomeus (New user):

two small errors on this page:
http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_linux_and_windows_xp_linux_installed_first.htm?page=5

One of the images have the red squares missplaced, hiding the text instead of circling it.
The line that says "Reboot the system. You'll get the GRUB bootloader but Vista won't be an option - we need to add this to the boot options." should of course say XP not vista in this webpage.

Moja (New user):

This is an amazing tutorial! Thanks A LOT for your help! :)

O_Man_RA23 (New user):

Tried this last night. Got to the bit where you install XP, formatted the partition I had left (~75GB) for XP into NTFS, went through the pre-install load (XP killed GRUB as expected), system rebooted itself, let it run through to HDD (rather than CD), and froze. Did not blank the screen, instead filled some segments of screen with coloured rectangles with numbers inserted in the colours and froze.

Has anyone come across anything similar?? Have I missed something (followed the instructions word for word). Am using Ubuntu 8.04 and XP SP2. Downloaded and burnt latest Ubuntu liveCD before embarking. Also made a backup of the MENU.lst file onto a flash disk.

Currently have a 300GB SATAII HDD, 200GB IDE HDD, and was wondering, should I continue with this plight, or re-instate Ubuntu, transfer all personal info onto a new HDD (thinking of buying a 1TB SATAII), then wipe the 300GB clean and install XP then Ubuntu on it?? This would be the 'easy' option, but involves bringing forward some cash outlay that I was putting off till tax came back.

Suggestions??

aussiemate (New user):

Hi when i try to install xp i keep getting the same message,can not find installed hdd,please can you help

Fixman (New user):

XP doesn't recognize SATA drives. Download drivers or download Vista, but it has nothing to see with your Linux installation.

VimFuego (New user):

will this work for an ACER AspireOne notebook with linpus light installed first? - sorry - very new at dual boot and reading around it a LOT first!

nero60 (New user):

I've already installed Ubuntu 8.04 under Windows XP. During the Boot Sequence Windows XP is the default OS. In order to use Ubuntu, I have to identify it. Is there a way to change the default OS to Ubuntu or is it necessary for me to re-install Ubuntu?

Appreciate any help!

ebarriosjr (New user):

Tnaks a lot men!!! I just installed Windows xp 64-bits version, and it works like a charm thanks to your guide!!!!
Thanks a lot....

ebarriosjr (New user):

Thanks a lot men!!! I have just finished installing Windows XP 64-bits after havimg Ubuntu 8.04 installed and your guide yorks like a charm.... Thanks a lot for the help! Keep posting!!!
XD

suresh vadivelu (New user):

i installed xp2 & suse linuxin my system but now i can't able 2 use, bcoz linux drive is not showing in my system tell me how 2 use both os in same system

Somebody (New user):

Anyone knows if this works on Linux MagicBox 12?
Please answer me!

Somebody (New user):

Does anyone knows if this also works on Linux MagicBox 12 ?

Somebody (New user):

Does anyone know if this also works on Linux MagicBox to instal Windows Xp Black edition?
Please answer

omnibus (New user):

When i start the xp cd it tells that it can't find any harddisks...

Can anyone help?

-Max

LesterAr (New user):

Hi Max! I´m having the same problem. Did you get to solve it? How di you do it? Thanks!

ramyapriya.m (New user):

please help me how to instal linux,as im already having windows xp

bedachtm (New user):

Not working for me. At XP CD Boot step I get message that windows is inspecting hardware, then nothing, just a black screen.

bedachtm (New user):

I tried to follow instructions, All went well up to the boot from the XP CD. I get a message "Win inspecting H/W cofig..." then black screen - nothing more.

Any idea what this could be?

bazzer (New user):

baz:
i am new to Linux .i have a vista on my dell and want to install kubuntu or any linux and have dual OS. i have done the partation using vista. i have around 5 partation now.they are as follows :os vista 250,recovery 10,f 100,g 100 and the last one is small dell related one. the four first one support NTFS system. Do i have to change that if i want to install linux ?
i tried installing it from a kubuntu cd but nothing work ?
What is my next step ? Can somebody advise me please ?
Cheers !!

bazzer (New user):

baz:
i am new to Linux .i have a vista on my dell and want to install kubuntu or any linux and have dual OS. i have done the partation using vista. i have around 5 partation now.they are as follows :os vista 250,recovery 10,f 100,g 100 and the last one is small dell related one. the four first one support NTFS system. Do i have to change that if i want to install linux ?
i tried installing it from a kubuntu cd but nothing work ?
What is my next step ? Can somebody advise me please ?
Cheers !!

bazzer (New user):

baz:
i am new to Linux .i have a vista on my dell and want to install kubuntu or any linux and have dual OS. i have done the partation using vista. i have around 5 partation now.they are as follows :os vista 250,recovery 10,f 100,g 100 and the last one is small dell related one. the four first one support NTFS system. Do i have to change that if i want to install linux ?
i tried installing it from a kubuntu cd but nothing work ?
What is my next step ? Can somebody advise me please ?
Cheers !!

seya (New user):

when I Restart the system using the Ubuntu Live CD, I can not find the "Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer" option, where is it? The first things I see are: This is the Ubuntu Live Cd.
Press f1 for help and advanced options.
For the default live system, press ENTER"
What way must I have go?
Please explain step by step

Samurai_47 (New user):

the only question i have is can i upgrade. that is XP -> Vista -> Win 7 Beta?

Thanks in advance.

jtokach (New user):

To get XP to use C:, boot your system with a USB pen drive connected. During the windows setup, instead of the Linux partition being assigned C:, the pen drive will get C:. Select the pen drive. Choose delete, it wont delete the pen drive data until you choose "L". Before pressiing L, remove the pen drive. Press L and you'll receive an error that the partition no longer exists, when you return to the selection list, voila, you can now assign C: to the empty partition.

custodian81 (New user):

This guide is fantastic - works seamlessly well even for a newbie.

pizzipie (New user):

Hi,

I tried this with my wifes Dell 1525 Inspiron w/ Vista. I know this article is about 8.04 but ..... The shrink partition thing worked fine. But ...

When installing 8.10 all it did was generate over a thousand Buffer IO SR0 errors and like stuff. I felt lucky that the whole Vista thing didn't blow up. It re-booted after I managed to get the disc out. I'm trying to figure out how to slipstream and all that stuff with XP but don't know how yet.

Ubuntu 8.10 works just fine with my Dell Latitude D800.

prakash (New user):

I have windows xp already installed on my PC and then i had installed Linux but i forgot have dual boot so when i start computer it directly switch to windows xp without asking about option of Linux or xp.

reply me on prakash_donga@yahoo.co.in

DrWilyBreen (New user):

Will this also work with Ubuntu 8.10?

DrWilyBreen (New user):

Will this work with Ubuntu 8.10?

The Penguin (Cornerstone member):

Updated for windows XP SP3 and Ubuntu 8.04.
How about updating it for 8.10?
or wait eight days and update it for 9.04?

Dirky Danglar (New user):

I have created a NTFS partition in Ubuntu but when I try to install XP there is only one partition available to install it on, I suspect this to be the Linux one so I am unable to install XP. Any ideas please DD

EMBOLISM (New user):

Kudos for all useful guides,but have never had any problems in dual booting fedora core after loading windows xp first on a clean partition for which I use kanotix live cd installer and after allocating and saving partitions always remember to set fstab in partition manager....so simple my son is 12 yrs old and he can do it.
well done to all those that contribute to the advancement and enjoyment of free operating systems and applications.

jaya (New user):

hi to everyone..
i need a help... actually i have installed linux(ubuntu) in my laptop.Now i want to install install windows xp in my laptop.
i tried many times to install windows xp i cann't.
help me...

thanks
jaya

Ishkabible (New user):

whenever I enter "setup (hd0)" under GRUB configuration mode I get an Error 17 message and it automatically goes into XP when I start up

HELP

Ishkabible (New user):

whenever I enter "setup (hd0)" in the GRUB configuration mode I get an ERROR 17 message and I still automatically boot to XP

HELP

fld3 (New user):

I have a dual boot system with Linux and Vista. I need to reinstall Vista and don't know where to begin. When I boot into Vista, it comes up with the request for the authenication key. I need to go back to the Vista partition and re insall Windows Xp and then upgrade to Vista.
Any suggestions?

fld3 (New user):

I have a dual boot system (Linux and Vista). I need to reinstall Vista and I don't know how to get to the Vista partition to install XP and then upgrade to Vista. The system will boot to Vista but won't show the homepage. It asks for the authentication code which does work because I installed an upgrade version of Vista which requires installing XP first.

B.Rishi (New user):

how to install xp sp2 with linux red hat 5. Linux RH5 already in the machine. Please???