Create Free Space in Windows XP

We assume that before you start this tutorial, you have backed up the drive (partitions and data) that will host the two operating systems.

Your first step will be to modify the Windows Vista system partition to make space for XP. There are three ways you can do this: GParted or DISKPART. We recommend using the GParted solution.

Option 1: Gparted

The GParted Live CD ISO is available here – burn it to CD and boot the system from the disc. The version we used was 0.3.7-7.

When you boot from the GParted LiveCD, depending on your system, you should just need to select the auto-configuration boot option.

During boot, press Enter twice when prompted to select the keymap and language settings.

When the main GUI loads, right-click on the main Windows XP NTFS partition (depending on your setup, probably /dev/hda1) and select Resize/Move.

Use the slider to reduce the partition size and free up enough room to install Windows 7 (at least 10GB) and click Resize/Move.

The changes haven’t actually been made, they’ve just been scheduled to run. To commit the changes and resize the partition, click Apply. GParted will ask to confirm the changes – hit OK and away you go.

Option 2: Using DISKPART

Boot the machine from the Windows 7 DVD. Select the appropriate language and then “Install Now”.

On the product key page, press SHIFT + F10 to launch a Windows PE 2.0 command window. Then type in DISKPART and press enter to get into the DISKPART utility.

Now type in LIST VOLUME – this gives you a readout of the volumes available on the system. Select the main Windows XP volume by typing in SELECT VOLUME 0 (in most cases it will be Volume 0 – in our lab in was Volume 1).

Now type in SHRINK. Windows 7 will reduce the size the selected Volume by around 50%.

Type “exit’ to get out of DISKPART and then “exit’ again to close the command window.

Install Windows 7

If you used the GParted LiveCD to shrink the XP partition, you’ll need to reboot the system from the Windows 7 install DVD. If you’ve used DISKPART then you just need to click “Install now” and continue the installation. There will be two install options – Upgrade and Custom – select Custom.

Once the install gets to the install location, there should be at least two options: a partition marked as Primary and Unallocated space. Select the unallocated space and click Next. The install will then commence.

The Windows 7 boot manager will take over the system completely.

Create Free Space in Windows XP

We assume that before you start this tutorial, you have backed up the drive (partitions and data) that will host the two operating systems.

Your first step will be to modify the Windows Vista system partition to make space for XP. There are three ways you can do this: GParted, DISKPART, or Disk Management. We recommend using the GParted solution.

Option 1: Gparted

The GParted Live CD ISO is available here – burn it to CD and boot the system from the disc. The version we used was 0.3.7-7.

When you boot from the GParted LiveCD, depending on your system, you should just need to select the auto-configuration boot option.

During boot, press Enter twice when prompted to select the keymap and language settings.

When the main GUI loads, right-click on the main Windows XP NTFS partition (depending on your setup, probably /dev/hda1) and select Resize/Move.

Use the slider to reduce the partition size and free up enough room to install XP (at least 5GB) and click Resize/Move.

The changes haven’t actually been made, they’ve just been scheduled to run. To commit the changes and resize the partition, click Apply. GParted will ask to confirm the changes – hit OK and away you go.

Option 2: Using DISKPART

Boot the machine from the Vista DVD. Select the appropriate language and then “Install Now”.

On the product key page, press SHIFT + F10 to launch a Windows PE 2.0 command window. Then type in DISKPART and press enter to get into the DISKPART utility.

Now type in LIST VOLUME – this gives you a readout of the volumes available on the system. Select the main Windows XP volume by typing in SELECT VOLUME 0 (in most cases it will be Volume 0 – in our lab in was Volume 1).

Now type in SHRINK. Vista will reduce the size the selected Volume by around 50%.

Type “exit’ to get out of DISKPART and then “exit’ again to close the command window.

Option 3: Disk Management

Using the Disk Management GUI is really no different to using DISKPART (it’s the GUI frontend to the DISKPART utility), but using the GUI does mean that you can make the changes within Vista before rebooting to install XP, without needing to use the Vista DVD.

Right-click on Computer and select Manage. In Computer Management, expand Storage and select Disk Management.

Right-click the primary partition (the one you need to make space on) and select Shrink Volume

The default values which Vista provides represent a fairly aggressive shrink – as long as the values will give you enough space to install XP, accept the defaults and select Shrink.

Vista will churn away for a moment, and then you’ll see the newly-created free space on the primary disk. Now you can reboot and install XP.

Install Windows XP

When the Windows XP setup reaches the point where you’re prompted where it is to be installed, you’ll see that while XP can see the space we created earlier, it can also see the partition with Vista on it.

You should be able to see the space you reclaimed on the disk earlier which has become “unallocated space”.

Create a second partition using the Windows XP installer screen above by selecting the free space on the drive and pressing “C” to create a partition (if prompted, choose NTFS as the file system.)

Irritatingly, XP assigns a drive letter to this partition (C:) which means that it will use the next available drive letter after all the other physical drives have been taken into account.

This means that the system drive of the XP installation won’t be C:.

From XP’s perspective this isn’t really a problem – it’s smart enough to figure out where everything should go – but some applications make assumptions about where they should install to, and can’t cope with a non-standard Windows configuration.

This was also the case with our tutorial on dualbooting Ubuntu and XP, where Ubuntu had been installed first. However in that scenario, even though the XP system drive had a non-standard drive letter, it couldn’t read the Linux partitions so there was no danger of the two systems overlapping. This is not the case with Vista/XP.

Nonetheless, install XP as normal – there’s no need to do anything differently.

After the initial file copy, Windows XP reboots and loads up the GUI-based component of the install. You may get the following error: “A disk read error occurred – press Ctrl-Alt-Del to continue”. This is caused by a corrupt bootloader.

Optional: Fix corrupt boot loader

If the Windows XP bootloader corrupts during the install, performing a reinstall won’t fix it, nor will going into the XP Recovery Mode and attempting to repair the MBR.

Luckily, the install was up to the stage where all you need to do is be able to boot from the Windows XP partition, and the install will pick up from where it left off.

To do this you will need to restore the Vista bootloader so that you can then boot into Vista, install EasyBCD and create a boot entry for Windows XP. Once this has been done you can boot into the XP partition and the installation will continue.

When the system reboots it won’t bring up a boot menu. Although XP recognises the Vista partition it doesn’t recognise Vista itself. This is because the Windows XP bootloader gets installed to the MBR, thus overwriting the Vista bootloader and so Vista can no longer boot – the XP bootloader can’t be made to recognise Vista.

Boot from the Vista DVD and on the screen where you’re prompted to “Install now”, select “Repair your computer”.

The next screen searches for local Vista installations – there should only be one, so click Next.

This loads the System Recovery Options screen. Select the first option – Startup Repair. This looks for problems which would prevent Vista from loading (like a missing bootloader) and automatically fixes them.

If you click on “Click here for diagnostic and repair details” and scroll to the bottom of the list, it shows that the problem detected and repaired was a corrupt boot sector (according to Vista, anyway).

Click Close and then Finish, and the system will restart and boot into Vista.

Enable Dual Booting

Now we are at a point, depending on the result of the last step, where we must add the other OS to our bootloader. To do this we will use an application called EasyBCD.

Once the system is up and running, download and install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, and then download and install EasyBCD (version 1.7.2 at the time of writing). If you are running Vista already you may not need the .NET framework update.

Launch the application. EasyBCD isn’t looking at the XP bootloader – it has found the bootloader on the Vista partition, so this is what you’re directly editing.

Go to the “Add/Remove Entries” tab. You’ll see that there’s only one option available in the Vista bootloader at the moment. In the “Add an Entry” section, change the Drive in the dropdown menu from C:\ to E:\. Change Type to “Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3″, and the Name to “Microsoft Windows XP”. Then click “Add Entry” and “Save”.

Then go to the “Manage Bootloader” tab. Make sure that “Reinstall the Vista Bootloader” is selected and then click “Write MBR” and restart the system.

On reboot, the Vista bootloader is now active and you’ll see two boot options.

Backup the GRUB boot menu

Regardless of which bootloader you end up using, it’s a very good move to first backup the GRUB bootloader. It’s easy to lose it and unless you know how to re-write it from scratch then you’re generally facing a full reinstallation of Ubuntu. If all you’re aiming for that afternoon is to get it all up, running, and get back to your casino game, email and IRC, it’s best to try and save as much time as humanly possible.

Firstly, boot into Ubuntu and go to Applications –> Accessories –> Terminal. Then, type in sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst.

This text file contains all the information GRUB uses to configure various boot options. Scroll down and the entries between “## ## End Default Options ##” and “### END DEBIAN AUTOMATIC KERNELS LIST” are the Linux boot options.

Make a backup of the file by going to File, Save As and selecting a different location. Or take a full copy of the contents and place it into a new text file. If you can, create the backup on a removable disk or networked location.

Make Space for XP

Now we need to create space on the hard drive for XP, so this will involve resizing the main Ubuntu partition. Restart the system using the Ubuntu Live CD as this gives you access to GNOME Partition Editor. When the CD loads, select “Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer”.

Once the CD loads, go to System, Administration, Partition Editor.

Right-click on the main data partition which has been formatted with ext3 – it should be /dev/sda1 – and select “Resize/Move”

Move the slider from the right to shrink the ext3 partition and create free space on the hard drive, which will take the NTFS XP partition. Make sure that the free space is sufficient to hold XP (at least 2GB – preferably 5GB). Then click “Resize/Move” to confirm the selection, and “Apply” back in the main screen to carry out the pending change.

Install Windows XP

Restart the system with the Windows XP CD and boot into the install program.

Unfortunately XP isn’t so adaptive at handling existing partitions during installation. It detects the two Ubuntu partitions and marks then C: and E: accordingly. The remaining unpartitioned space which is available for XP will be marked as F:.

For the operating system and the vast majority of Windows applications which have properly-coded installation scripts, this is not a problem. Some older applications will assume that C: is the system partition and may bring up errors. There are ways of changing the drive letter assignation of the system partition, but in this scenario it’s strongly discouraged.

To insult to injury, XP detects the Linux partition as an active system partition and won’t install unless it marks this partition as inactive.

Restore the GRUB boot loader

Once XP has been installed, it will boot happily into XP but there’s no sign of Ubuntu. To reinstate GRUB as the system bootloader it needs to be reinstalled into the MBR.

Boot the system from the Ubuntu Live CD and select “Try Ubuntu without any change to your computer”.

Open a Terminal session – Applications, Accessories, Terminal

To enter the GRUB configuration mode, type in “sudo grub” and press Enter. Then type in the following commands in sequence:

root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)
quit
exit

Reboot the system. You’ll get the GRUB bootloader but Vista won’t be an option – we need to add this to the boot options.

Boot into Ubuntu and open up another Terminal session. Then, type in sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Scroll down to the bottom of the file and type in the following text strings:

title Windows XP
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Save the file and reboot. When the GRUB loader launches hit ESC for the boot menu. Windows XP is the last option – select it and XP will load.

If you want to make the GRUB menu always available, boot back into Ubuntu and edit the MENU.LST file. Find the hiddenmenu text string and change it to #hiddenmenu.

To increase the menu timeout, change the default timeout 3 to something more appropriate.

Boot disks coming soon…

Boot disks coming soon…

Boot disks coming soon…

Boot disks coming soon…

Boot disks coming soon…

Please check out the Windows XP Professional Boot Disks which will work with any standard 1.44 floppy drive.

Please contact us if you have anything we are missing.

To create the boot disk you simply need to download one of the following files below. Insert a blank disk into your floppy drive, and launch the application that was downloaded.

• Windows XP Professional (4.2 MB)
  • Disk 1 (359 KB)
  • Disk 2 (1.0 MB)
  • Disk 3 (1.1 MB)
  • Disk 4 (1.3 MB)
  • Disk 5 (776 KB)
  • Disk 6 (543 KB)
• Windows XP Professional Service Pack 1 (4.2 MB)
  • Disk 1 (336 KB)
  • Disk 2 (1008 KB)
  • Disk 3 (1.1 MB)
  • Disk 4 (1.3 MB)
  • Disk 5 (806 KB)
  • Disk 6 (540 KB)
• Windows XP Professional Service Pack 2 (4.4 MB)
  • Disk 1 (372 KB)
  • Disk 2 (1.1 MB)
  • Disk 3 (1.1 MB)
  • Disk 4 (1.3 MB)
  • Disk 5 (811 KB)
  • Disk 6 (547 KB)