Hi, I'm new to the forum and I was looking about for a topic on this, but I couldn't find one. If one there is, here are my apologies in advance.

I started using Ubuntu 8.04 after many years of Windows usage and I was quite pleased with the result. I love the OS and its applications, and it has never given me troubles in any way.

The only problem I find, is that I can't seem to run Sims 2 on it, which is pretty much the only PC game I was interested in running. While browsing online, I found that programs such as Wine and Cedega seem to have problems running it as well, so I considered dual booting between Ubuntu and Windows XP.

I read several tutorials on different ways of doing this, so I would like to know your opinion concerning it. Is there a tutorial that is more trustworthy than the other? Or a step-by-step, simpler way of doing it? Also, since most tutorials require Windows XP to be installed first, is it possible to do the process with Ubuntu installed first? Would also be interested to know how exactly do you manage dual boot: does Windows open as a regular program?

I have also read about malfunctions in dual booting, what dangers am I facing here, what can go wrong?

If instead of dual booting someone could teach me a way to run Sims 2 on Ubuntu that's easier, please do so.

Many thanks in advance for your help!

Have you read this one?
http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_l...lled_first.htm

I think it's pretty trustworthy. I dual boot Windows XP SP3 and have never had any problems with the dual booting aspect.

You pick the OS you want at boot time and run one or the other

General cautions:

Don't let either OS mess around with each other's file system. Read Only is safer (though I've broken this rule many times with no ill effects)

Be wary of Windows updates, although I've never seen it, they have been reported to mess up GRUB (your bootloader). Doesn't mean you shouldn't apply updates, just means you should backup regularly and practice "safe computing" (whatever that is) and have a rescue disk (Knoppix/Supergrub and the Windows install disk)

Sorry, can't help you there

i also have win xp sp3 and fedora 8
the best way is buy a second hard drive so you have two
first drive is windows( M$ will give you trouble if it is not first )
then Linux on the second drive
I use the windows NTLoader to start grub .Because I HAVE HAD MS " fix" my WORKING grub install
it is also known as the " dd " method see:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/...ight=dual+boot
but will work with other distros like Ubuntu