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Thank you for paying attention and replying to my requests.

I am in need of having to use Windows XP, and I was wondering which methods could you provide me in order to sucessfully install Windows XP on my HDD which already has Ubuntu 12.04.

Reading here and there, I've come up with a plan:

First, I'll resize my partitions using Gparted:

  • Partition 1 - 199 MB Ext4
  • Partition 2 - 2 GB SWAP
  • Partition 3 - 78 GB Ext 4

I'll resize those on the image to, maybe:

  • First partition: Will be increased to 6 GB.

  • Second partition: Swap will stay the same.

  • Third partition: Will be first reduced to ~30 GB, and then moved all the way to the right.

  • A new partition will be made with the space in between Swap and the 30 GB partition, intended for Windows XP use, and maybe a few media files shared with Ubuntu 12.04.

After that, the first partition will become the target of my Windows XP installation. I'll also choose the free space for a partition so that the Windows Setup formats it and I can be sure Windows XP will be able to use it.

That's basically what I've thought up. All that would be left for me to do should be booting the Ubuntu 12.04 Live CD and running Boot-Repair.

Now, may I ask you, is there a fail behind my plan? Are there better ways? Any recommendation or comments?

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  • The problem was moving the start of the partitions, is a bad plan whenever you do that since bootloaders usually use this to mark where partitions starts.
    – Braiam
    Sep 19, 2013 at 20:23
  • Close voters see this comment askubuntu.com/questions/346512/…
    – Braiam
    Sep 24, 2013 at 18:13
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    If I were you I would run Windows XP in a Virtual Machine (like Virtualbox) and not bother at all with editing partitions.
    – pzkpfw
    Feb 18, 2014 at 16:40

3 Answers 3

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you can try installing windows xp using a virtualbox.Below link may be useful for you.

Install windows 7 through virtual box

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  • I read your link, but it's only about installing Windows through VirtualBox, which I'm not interested in. I want a real installation, to dual-boot Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows XP.
    – Johel
    Sep 17, 2013 at 10:44
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1) You should allocate the space of Windows 7 (min 20GB)

  • Open the terminal and type gparted
  • If not installed, please install using

    sudo apt-get install gparted

  • Partition a disk where you need to install Windows 7

2) Insert the Windows 7 CD and install it and the drive allocated for windows. After installation, the windows boot loader will override the grub, so there will not be any menu listing for choosing Ubuntu.

3) Insert the live CD of any Ubuntu distribution and run the following commands in the terminal.

sudo mount /dev/<device_name> /mnt #device_name of Ubuntu installation (ex. sda3)
sudo rm -rf /boot
sudo ln -s /mnt/boot /boot
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install grub-pc
sudo grub-install /dev/sda #no device number here
sudo umount /boot

4) Restart the device. It should work fine.

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I once installed windows AFTER installing ubuntu. It overrode my ubuntu (grub), you will not have access to ubuntu. However, nowadays there is a 'free' Windows package called 'EasyBCD' that might give you back your access to ubuntu if you go the direct route. I have used virtualbox also.

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  • Well, I ended up doing what I wrote on the main post, but only Windows would appear on the Grub OS' selection screen. I tried using Boot-Repair from the LiveCD, with different settings various times, but all ammounted to nothing. In the end, I just formatted again, with Windows XP first, and left space for Ubuntu. Installed Ubuntu, and I finally could use both OS'.
    – Johel
    Sep 18, 2013 at 19:49
  • Ohh, that's bad. I have too many settings, SSH keys, ubuntu configurations etc. If I format everything, I will lose big amount of time to configure everything again. I tried VirtualBox, but it's too slow on single core CPU.
    – Ifch0o1
    Jan 29, 2015 at 4:31

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