I have gotten away from using windows for personal use and dont use it because of all the security vulnerabilities, viruses etc., but unfortunately there come times whenever you are forced to use a windows application such as when a website for school says that you can only use Internet explorer and windows XP to access their website, or when you are given a CD for a class that runs on windows XP.

I have SUSE linux 9.3 installed on my laptop harddrive, thus the dual boot option with the partiotions cannot be done because I have heard on the other forums that it is complicated to install windows XP on a partition whenever linux has already been installed but that it is easy whenever you Windows XP is already installed and you want to install linux.

I have a portable USB HDD that has a capacity of 20GB, I also saw on the website Tom's hardware page that I can install Windows XP on a portable hard drive. Here is the link to the web page: http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/09/...n_your_pocket/

now my question is whenever I plug this portable hard drive into the USB port of my laptop how can I tell my computer to boot from the Portable hard drive. Is this even possible??

1)Please let me know if you know how to install windows on the same hard drive as linux whenever linux is already installed.

2) or please tell me if the scenario that I have illustrated above is possible.

Hello,
Answering your 1st question.
its dual boot.
but since you have to install windows now......so it require the 1st primary partion of the hard drive.
So you check that where is your linux installed. If its not in the 1st primary then its fine. Otherwise you will have to make that partition empty for windows i.e will have to remove linux.
It will be case of installing windows first and then linux...so no problem

Suppose its other way round, i.e linux is not in 1st primary partion or is in some logical one.
Have a bootable floppy for linux or be ready with the bootable cd from which you installed the linux.
Install windows.
It will overwrite the MBR so now you won't be able to access linux.
reboot the system using the bootable cd of linux and restore your grub/lilo.

Thats it !!!

regards

Ok now the question that I have is how can I do a dual boot on the same hard drive whenever linux is already installed on my hard drive. In other words can you tell me how to install windows xp on the same hard drive as my linux distro by creating a new partition for windows? I know this used to be extremely complicated but can it be done any easier now?

post the output of
#fdisk -l
( let me see your partitions first )

regards

here is the output of whenever I press fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40007761920 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4864 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 120 963868+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/hda2 * 121 4864 38106180 83 Linux
rn102253:/home/chacmool #

Its tough time buddy.
you have only two partitions.
1st one for swap and second one for main linux.

window asks for the 1st partition. The default installation of window XP requires more than 1 GB space.......your swap is not that big enogh. Otherwise we could have installed windows there.

So the option seems to me is......U will have to either resize the linux partition....and try to have first 5 GB space empty for windows( although 3 GB will also work.....but still have more), make swap somewhere else and install windows in the first partiton.
Now how to resize, i don't know. ( search here in this forum or google it)
second option would be reformat the whole drive after taking backup somewhere and then install windows and then linux.

regards