How to Dual Boot Windows XP and Linux on a Single Hard Disk

How To Dual Boot Linux and Windows XP on a Single Hard Disk

  I know this may seems a long winded method to achieve the dual boot and you may say this is hardly a beginnners guide, well maybe not but it is a very accurate and well detailed easy to follow tutorial, if you would like to install a Windows and a Linux OS on your system I feel this is the best way to start.

This step by step guide is meant to show you how to install Linux (Fedora Core 2) on one hard drive, on top of an existing Windows machine, and using native boot loaders for each OS, i.e. the ntloader for Windows, and grub for booting Linux. This 21 step guide details each step necessary to perform a dual boot of Windows XP and Linux, and uses the QtParted tool in the SystemRescueCD to resize NTFS (QtParted is a free tool for resizing NTFS partitions).

There are a number of advantages to using this approach

1. It keeps both system separated on a single hard drive, thus allowing you to upgrade either system without overwriting the other boot loader image.
2. Because this approach doesn't require a floppy and only requires one hard drive, it is well suited for laptops. That is important since many laptops do not have a floppy and are available with only one hard drive.
3. This approach allows you to install Linux on top of an existing Windows XP machine without having to reinstall Windows XP, and without losing any existing files.
4. It uses only free software.
5. This guide has been successfully completed by many users with no prior experience in dual booting.

For this guide you will need the following resources

• An iso distribution of SystemRescueCD-x86-0.2.15 (find CDROM in the Cuesta lab).
• An iso distribution of Linux, for example Fedora Core 2 disks 1-4 (find CDROMS in the Cuesta lab)
  
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