Hi Guys

I'm using fedoracore 4 as you all know, I want to re-install xp home. by making it a dualboot with the (GRUB) really need
help i'm learning new things all time and this one got to the point where i'lll have to take it to a linux tech want to save some money and learn my self.

Sorry guys i posted his queston in the wrong area if there's any mods online can you delete my old thread please, what i want to do is do a dualboot on an acer asprie 3610. Rite now i'm using fedoracore 4 and want to add xp my linux tech did it last time but wish to save money by doing it my self. can someone help out i ahve xp home ready to go...

Installing Linux (or GNU/Linux as I prefer to call it) as your SECOND OS is supported and well documented. However, installing WinXP as a second OS would be a little bit tricky.

Some pointers:
1) Do you have enough free space of your primary hard drive for an XP install?
2) Do you know or have any experience with Partition Magic?
3) How experienced are you with GNU/Linux?

The jist of it is that you'll most probably have to re-partition your harddrive (careful! this is a dangerous step as it can wipe all your data). Then you'll be able to install XP to the newely created partition(s). This process however will destroy GRUB/LILO (your bootloader), so you'll have to re-install it and tell it where XP and GNU are, in order to create a dual boot system.

If you are handy with hardware, and you have another HDD: It would be safer to swap out the drive, install XP, and then reconfigure the system with the XP drive as Primary/Slave.
After booting up into Linux gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst to add the Windows OS to the boot loader.

more than likely, you'll need to repartition your hard drive to create room for your XP installation. Unfortunately, I do not know of any freeware software that does this sanely.

The only one I know of is Partition Magic.

I'm sure there are GNU-based software out there...I just don't know of any.

Once you partition your hard drive, you should be able to install windows from cd as usual. You will, however, need to re-image your Master Boot Record so you can have linux dual boot. Refer to my posting for details on how to do this.

you should be perfectly fine. The easy way to do this is to create a boot disk. Create the boot disk and then set up your computer to boot from the boot disk device so you can test and see that the boot disk works (it should boot you into linux). After that, do your windows install. After making sure your windows install was kosher, boot from your bootdisk and edit your /boot/grub/grub.conf file. Add the chainloader command so you have an option to boot into windows from grub. Save the file and then run the command:

grub-install /dev/hda

Reboot your machine, test that you can get into windows. If you can't, well you can use your windows install cd to install the windows bootloader (fixmbr command) and then use the bootdisk to boot into linux. You shouldn't have any problems though.

All this is assuming that you've correctly added free unformatted space on your hd and formatted that free space correctly and installed windows into that free space.

Since you had replies in both of your threads I merged them together and put them here in Linux - Laptops and Handhelds. Good luck.