Re: Reconfigure For Dual Boot
- From: "Jerry" <ChiefZekeNoSpam@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 5 Mar 2007 12:16:25 -0800
Partition Magic may do it. Should be at Best Buy, Circuit City, etc. Read
box to verify its particulars.
"Pete B" <petescastle@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:u4bNNuzXHHA.4008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I am currently running WinXP Pro on my stand-alone home PC, with the HDD
installation configured for XP as the only operating system. IOW, I only
have one NTFS partition on my HDD which contains the bootable XP operating
system. I also have a great amount of other MS and third-party Windows
software applications installed. (And I love XP pro too, this has nothing
to do with XP dissatisfaction, I think it is great.)
What I would like to do is to reconfigure the PC hard drive so that I can
install a second operating system (Ubuntu Linux). Is there any way to do
this without complertely removing XP, reformatting and repartioning the
HDD to two dual boot partitions, and reinstalling XP from scratch set for
dual boot? I cannot simply image the drive and redo it because that would
just reinstall the system the way it is now. I have a 120G HDD and I have
about 70G free space now, so HDD capacity is not a problem. From what I
have read in the Help file and the MSKB, the only way to do this would
entail losing all my current software installations permanently, and above
all I do NOT want to go through the ordeal of reactivating my WinXP and
other MS and non-MS software licenses if I have to redo everything from
scratch.
If it is not possible, I am considering two alternatives:
1) I could buy software like Partiton Magic or similar, and use that to
make virtual partitions and transform to dual boot. I actually have an
older version of Part Mag, which I intended to use back in my Win 98 SE
period on a previous PC, but I never actually used it because I was always
afraid it might end up causing a HDD meltdown nightmare somehow . Is that
software reliable for something like this if I were to get the current
version? Meaning is there any reasonable chance it would corrupt my HDD
rather than do what it is supposed to do, and would it in any way cripple
my system in some respect?
2) I have that old W98SE PC sitting around unused, an older but suitable
P2 system, which I could simply redo by deleting the W98 and reformatting
etc. and make it a totally Linux machine, and I could then get the
necessary home network hardware to network it to my current PC so that it
shares the internet and printer capabilities of my present system. Would
this be preferable to the other two choices, even though I would have to
buy the wireless networking hardware for it? I really just want to learn
about Linux (I am the world's biggest MS fan so that is not the purpose
here), and I may find an occasional use for Linux sofware apps, but it is
mostly just a retired VB programmer's curiousity about the Wonderful World
of OSS that my son, who has the MS in CSG (Computer Science Geekery,)
keeps touting to me :=). And a sidebar dumb question: can you network a
Linux PC to a MS system like that, does Linux have the same capability
that MS does for such stuff?
Any help or advice would be appreciated. Of the two alternatives, I would
rather go with the PM software and use just the current PC than with two
actual PC systems networked together, because I may have other uses for
the old PC in the future.
--
Pete B
.
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