Re: Reconfigure For Dual Boot

I decided that software was easiest too. But I am going with Acronis Disk
Director Suite, which has a Partition Expert, OS Selector and other utils
all included:

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/products/diskdirector/

I have been using their great backup util, Acronis True Image Home, which is
the cadillac of backup utils. All downloaded already, and cheaper for both
the disk suite and an upgraded True Image than buying Part Ed alone
(besides, Part Ed is now a Norton's product and I refuse to ever use their
crap again, nothing but problems). Thanks for the reply.

--
Pete B

"Jerry" <ChiefZekeNoSpam@xxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:%23H2bhM2XHHA.4000@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
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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