[Jen]

I currently have only Red Hat Linux on a hard drive. I want to also be able to use Windows XP, and have a full version just waiting to be installed. I'm pretty much a newbie and don't know what the best way to go about this is, especially not with Linux. Can someone please point me in the right direction?

 

[Guest]

Hello Jen and welcome to the forums......................

I usually load Windows first and then load Linux last so you can tell it how much of the drive you want Linux to use.

But seeing that you already have Linux on there I'm sure someone who has done it this way will help you out.

So hang in there...........................:winkgrin:

 

[JAMMAN]

That's a tough one, since you loaded red hat first your entire hard drive is partitioned for linux. But..........................

If you have an old cd of "partition magic" you can boot to dos from a win98 startup disk and run PM from the CD!! there is a dos version of PM on the cd. Then you could add and format a partition appropriate for XP.

Being I don't know much about XP (I'm boycotting it because of registration constraints) I hope an XP user will jump in here and say"XP has a built in partition constructor" but I doubt that any MS product will give you the option to share with the competition.

 

[TheTechIsIn]

yeah, Jammans right Microsoft doesnt play well with others and does not include anything to do what you need.

Iv never installed linux first so .... I cant help you there either. Im not even sure if linux will allow you to resize via PM after its installed without having a heart attack the next time it boots up and finds pieces of itself missing....

Your best bet would be to backup any linux files you want to save, blow out the drive, install XP then Linux.

 

[Jen]

I don't think XP has a built in partition constructor, and I don't have any old copies of partition magic laying around, so I think I'll be taking Tech's advice. I'll wait a while though and see if anything else comes up. I'm not even quite sure of how to wipe out the drive as it is right now anyway. The thought of it makes me a bit nervous.

 

[Lectraplayer]

Try this.

If you don't need anything peticular from Linux other than it being "Linux," you can overinstall XP on your hard disk. Here, everything you have will likely be blasted. After XP wrecks its havoc, get it halfway tweaked. Now install Linux & tweak everything the rest of the way.