Hi everyone,

How goes it this beautiful Monday? Um I am having a small problem setting up a dual boot Windows XP and a UBuntu Dell Linux Desktop. Now this is a brand new Dell desktop, so space is really not the issue. Basically I have been following the instructions from the following set of web pages

linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2006/05/08/dual-boot-laptop.html

Now my computer came with a local C disk which has about 52.7 GB of space of which 45.4 GB is free and a backup B drive which has about 18.6 GB of space, of which pretty much all is free.
The part with which I am having a problem deals with the System Rescue CD. At the boot prompt things work pretty much as normal, instead of using fb800 nodetect, I use fb640 nodetect. Then I use run_qtparted at the command prompt to partition my hard drive between Windows XP, Linux, Linux swap and the FAT32 partation, and things get a little weird. Well anyways my partition numbers are as follows

No Partition Status Type Size Start End

01 /dev/hda1 fat16 39.19MB 0.03MB 39.22MB

02 /dev/hda2 Active ntfs 52.71GB 39.22MB 52.75GB

03 /dev/hda3 ntfs 18.60GB 52.75GB 71.35GB

04 /dev/hda4 fat32 3.15GB 71.35GB 74.50GB

05 /dev/hda-1 Hidden free 7.84MB 74.50GB 74.5GB

Well I am guessing that my 02 partition indicates my C drive (yes I am a Newbie ) and my 03 partition is the backup B drive. So anyways I started by trying to resize my 02 partition with 20GB for Windows XP, 24GB for UBuntu Linux and 2GB for the Linux swap. (To be honest I have no clue what to do about FAT32, it already seems to be there on the 04 partition ) Well anyways I when I try to resize my 02 partition it rearranges my partition tree as follows

No Partition Status Type Size Start End

01 /dev/hda1 fat16 39.19MB 0.03MB 39.22MB

02 /dev/hda2 Active ntfs 20.09GB 39.22MB 20.13GB

03 /dev/hda-1 free 32.62GB 20.13GB 52.75GB

04 /dev/hda3 ntfs 18.60GB 52.75GB 71.35GB

05 /dev/hda4 fat32 3.15GB 71.35GB 74.5GB

05 /dev/hda-1 Hidden free 7.84MB 74.50GB 74.5GB

So basically I have been able to resize my windows partition down to 20GB but I am not sure how to set up the ext3 Linux partition. When I highlight any of the the partition lines and go to the operations menu the create menu/button is blanked out not allowing me to create the ext3 primary partition for UBuntu Linux. Any suggestions?? Thanks. have a great week everyone.

You might want to get rid of dual boot altogether and instead run XP under Ubuntu using virtual machine software such as VMWare (http://www.vmware.com) or Parallels (http://www.parallels.com). This has the advantage of being able to run your XP and Ubuntu programs side by side and where they can talk to each other.

Good point, I never thought about that to be honest. Now this may sound adamant, but I am a newbie to Linux so I am thinking along the lines that I would like to take a crack at setting up a dual boot set up first, just for my own curiosity on how the process works. In addition I probably forgot to mention that my comp came with a preinstalled version of Windows XP, I do not have any back up CD of XP.

You should have or you should be able to make a set of recovery CDs for your Dell. If those don't include an install CD of some sort for XP then you probably want to go to Dell tech support and ask them how to create an install CD for XP for your Dell. In any case, whether or not you set up dual boot, you want to have an install CD for XP because it is absolutely certain that, at some time in the future, you will have to use that XP install CD.

My experience with dual boot tells me that the result is nowhere near worth the trouble of setting it up, even if setting up dual boot is easy as it usually is, except, of course, in your case, which happens, but not often. Further, setting up dual boot doesn't get you acquainted with linux nearly as well as you would if you were able to set up a virtual machine under linux to run XP.