Installing windows over linux on a fully partitioned drive for linux
 

I recenlty got a computer from this great workshop i attended on MPI parallel computer networking. The O/S that the computer came with was Linux RH9. I got a copy of Windows XP Pro (System Disk) that I wanted to install on the computer but when I tried intalling it by bringing it up in Linux and tring to run the file that way (as someone told me to do...genius) I recieved the error message that "Nautilus has no installed viewer capable of displaying "/mnt/cdrom/setup.exe"" I also tried to go to BIOS and remove the 1st floppy drive (which doesnt exist b/c there is no floppy drive) and the hard drive as boot sources, put the windows system disk in and restarted the computer to try and load the system disk that way. This also didnt work. What should I really do to try and install windows as the primary or to partition the drive and have equal acess to both. I use windows more than I will linux so it is most important that I get that running but I would really love to have access to both with windows as the primary. I know this is kind of a vague post and I am a newbie but HELP!!!!! You guys are really sharp on this website and i am ready to learn as much as possible from you. What do i do?

You'll need to play around with the BIOS to get the system to boot from the CD-drive. You can't run the Windows setup from inside Linux.

If you put a floppy drive in, then you might be able to boot from that to install Windows.

You can shrink the Linux partitions, but it can be a tricky task to do if you hope to keep the system running without too much work.

The real trouble you will run into is that Windows will takeover the booting of the system, and you won't be able to get back into Linux without a floppy or a RedHat CD and bootable drive

I really can't believe you would want to put windows on that :(

Anyways, if you don't know that much about computers you get into bios by clicking the delete button while the system is booting up before linux loads. There should be something called boot sequence and to change it you either press the keypad's up and down keys or you hit enter and scroll to what you want, that really depends on the bios. f10 to save and exit. make sure it goes CDrom first and that on the list you have the hard drive otherwise windows won't boot once it's installed.

If you have an interest in linux you really do need to get the discs to the operating system.


note: if you use windows the most you won't use linux. I did that same thing and I eventuallly just deleted it because it went unused.I have lost all the data on my computer because of windows multiple times but I have never lost a single thing on a linux box, which now all of my computers are, and I love being able to know that when I'm typing up a paper I don't have to worry about saving it every half an hour. Windows is not a good, stable, operating system and if you now have two machines you should leave linux on that one and learn how to use it as a windows replacement, which is works wonderfully at. You will struggle with games most likely however.