Duel Booting/Installing XP SP3 while Linux Mint is all I got

[Khalid]

Is there a way to do that? I have tried many things but I've failed.. I want to dual boot XP SP3 but with Linux Mint installed first. All I have right now is Linux Mint and some Live CD's..

I've also got the original XP SP3 (shipped with my Dell) CD..

I got nothing else to say since I'm lost.. so, can anyone help me?

[oobetimer]

Is there a way to do that? I have tried many things but I've failed.. I want to dual boot XP SP3 but with Linux Mint installed first. All I have right now is Linux Mint and some Live CD's..

I've also got the original XP SP3 (shipped with my Dell) CD..

I got nothing else to say since I'm lost.. so, can anyone help me?

I suppose that you have to make some space for XP first. You can shrink Mint partition/partitions using GParted via liveCD, and you can make a ntfs-partition for XP at the same time.

When the partitions are made, you can install XP to the ntfs-partition.

When XP is installed, you have to restore grub via liveCD (or you can make an USB-boot-stick before of course, so restoring is easy to do)

Grub restoring via liveCD´s terminal

sudo fdisk -l

...you see the media. If mint resides on sda5, so..

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda

sudo umount /mnt

When Mint has booted up

sudo os-prober

sudo update-grub

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=56726

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=53070

[Khalid]

Thank you for the quick answer, but, can you tell me how to backup/restore the grub or whatever that is?

Please know that I'm a total beginner to all this... thanks.

[tdockery97]

You don't really have to back it up; it's still there, it just doesn't recognize your new configuration. The instructions oobetimer gave you updates grub to recognize your new configuration.

Be very careful in installing Windows with Linux already installed. Windows likes to install itself at the beginning of the drive, so make sure you are in control of which partition it installs to. You may want to make a system image of your Linux partition just in case something bad happens and Windows overwrites your partition. Use Clonezilla or something similar to back up so that you can restore your system exactly the way it was.

"I've also got the original XP SP3 (shipped with my Dell) CD.."

In addition, make sure that your CD is a Windows installation disk and not a restore or rescue disk. If it is a restore disk it will only put your system back to the way it was when you bought the computer and will wipe the whole hard drive in the process.