Hello,
I own a computer that has SUSE 9.1 installed as the operating system. I want to play computer games on it and I cant get them to work with wine or anything else so I have decided that I want to create a dual boot so that I can use the windows partition to play games on it.

Can I make a dual boot computer when linux has already been installed and I want to install Windows XP afterwards?

Is this even possible? I know that one can do a dual boot by installing windows first and then linux but I dont know about the opposite.

thanks for your help.

Yes, it can be done. It's just more work for you when installing xp after Linux.

1) Make a boot floppy or cd for Linux, or be prepared to use the install cd to be able to boot Linux until you get grub (the bootloader) configured.

2) Assuming you already have a partition set up for xp, install xp. It will write to the MBR and make Linux un-bootable except as outlined in 1) above.

3) after xp is installed, boot into Linux as outlined above, and re-install grub (not install the software, but setup grub to re-write to the MBR). There are instructions easily found on how to do that.

4) Edit /boot/grub/menu.lst to add an entry for xp. Search these boards. There are many examples of the correct entries to make.

5) To choose a default system to boot, make the menu.lst entry 'default 0', then put the entry for the default as first in the list. Or, if you have xp listed second in the list of OSs, and you want xp to be the default, change the default to 1. In grub accounting, numbers start with 0. 0 is first; 1 is second; etc.

6) Test your work. Re-boot. If grub comes up with Linux and xp in the choices, you did it right.

If you haven't got a partition ready you will have to resize your Suse partition so that it is the second partition because XP will want to be on the front of the HD.

Wayne

best option is

1. backup data
2. install windows
3. install linux

Please, don't do it this way!

Bigriddriver's Way is good and will tell You the little secrets about startmechanisms from Linux. Isn't the Knowlegde about Linux-Things the impulse from which this Forum lives?

If You miss some Details about Bigriddrivers todo-list then feel free to ask.

In one point jayakrishnan is right; Backup Your data before change Partition-sizes, install other OS or change MBR's.