Kubuntu installed and want to install xp .

[kdeuser]

Hi all , wishing everybody seasons greetings.

I have installed and recently upgraded after many years Kubuntu 12.04.5 LTS .

Would like to install Windows xp alongside but since the Kubuntu install on this particular pc is modified to suite the needs of the htpc ; need some guidance , plus i am more or less a duck out of water here.

The problem being the fact that there are 4 partitions already made, so a fifth one is not an option - unless the existing swap can be shoe horned into a FAT32 ?



Thank you for any help .

[NickStone]

Windows is very aggresive against other OS's. ou try to install WindowsXP (or any version) alongside Linux and it will simply overwrite and take over the entire HD and you will lose everything installed through Linux. Windows does not play nice or fair with other OS's.

If you really want Windows and Linux side by side on same HD you will need to install Windows first. Meaning backup everything you want to keep on Linux partition.

Best option is to install Windows in Virtualbox or some other virtualisation software.

[anika200]

You can install Windows XP into VirtualBox and use the /dev/sda4 to contain the VM virtual file (holds Windows xp).
If you really want to have native XP then here is a very general guide, the details for each step are already on the internet:
Wipe the last partition (/dev/sda4) and then move the rest of the partitions to the back of the drive.
This will create unalocated or free space in the first partition and the beginning of the drive.
Make this new empty space a msdos partition formated to fat32
Install XP into the first partition.
You will loose your ability to boot into Kubuntu so you will need to boot from a Kubuntu/Ubuntu/linux live DVD or CD so you get the boot manager working again.
Once booted from live linux mount the proper drives and run the commands necessary to rebuild the Grub2 menu which should then let you boot into Windows Xp.

[kdeuser]

Wipe the last partition (/dev/sda4) and then move the rest of the partitions to the back of the drive.

Make this new empty space a msdos partition formated to fat32
Install XP into the first partition.

Once booted from live linux mount the proper drives and run the commands necessary to rebuild the Grub2 menu which should then let you boot into Windows Xp.

Normaly i download new files to Desktop , so i would like some space , say 50 gb. If /dev/sda4/ were to be deleted where would media be saved in kubuntu ; or would a shared partition be a solution here.

That new empty partition being fat32 , would this be a share ? I have extended sda4 to cover the remaining space before , however, when changed to ext3 or 4 - can not boot back in.

[anika200]

Normaly i download new files to Desktop , so i would like some space , say 50 gb. If /dev/sda4/ were to be deleted where would media be saved in kubuntu ; or would a shared partition be a solution here.

That new empty partition being fat32 , would this be a share ? I have extended sda4 to cover the remaining space before , however, when changed to ext3 or 4 - can not boot back in.

Of course I have left all the details for you to do as you please, once you have the free space you can carve it up into a couple partitions if you wish. Just keep in mind windows xp will only boot off the first primary partition on the drive.

[vinnywright]

your easyest way will be to install XP in VirtualBox ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, as you know you can only have 4 primary partitions ,,,,,,,,,,and XP will nead the first primary partition on the drive .

you can have as many logical partitions as you can fit into an extended partition however ,,,,,,,,,like so

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ sudo parted -l
[sudo] password for vinny: 
Model: ATA HGST HTS725050A7 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End    Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      8225kB  323GB  323GB   primary   ext4            boot
 3      323GB   379GB  56.3GB  primary   ext4
 4      379GB   496GB  117GB   extended
 5      379GB   436GB  57.0GB  logical   ext4
 6      436GB   496GB  59.8GB  logical   ext4
 2      496GB   500GB  4295MB  primary   linux-swap(v1)

3 primary 1 extended and 2 logical partitions within the extended

your problem is deciding how to shuffle delete and remake so you have a large enough for XP primary partition at the front of the drive and still not lose to much of what you already have .

VINNY

[sithlord48]

unless your running a game you should use virtual box . But if you have to install XP then you should see this wiki entry for help after you install.

If you haven't you should see if that thing you need xp for will work with wine you can search the Application Database and see. if it does then you no longer need xp and can just use wine.

[kdeuser]

I went ahead and installed virtualbox 4.3.20 and xp seems to be ok , just acouple of things though.

Flash video is really bad , skipping every second and no constant flow to it. Went back to install to see if 3d was checked - yes it was but not 2d.

Seems that additional software is needed and so downloaded and installed ´windows guest additions ´, so i thought.....

Was not in safe mode so googled abit and found that the f8 key needed pressing repeatedly . The message to reboot appeared and hit finish , windows started to go through the motions.

Windows then installed back as normal , went to a flash video site and ( i have to say it ) , worse than before . There was very bad pixelation to the point that video was unrecognizable.

Went back to a snapshot ( great feature ) and restored the os . Made another attempt and the same thing.

The guest additions are in D/ drive but everytime on install i come back to D/ and 3d still is not activated.

In a nut shell , abit lost on this, must be doing something wrong.

Have n´t gotten around to opening a share file yet as i would like to solve the 3d issue first.

[life0riley]

Your performance in a virtual environment will not match the performance of a native hard drive install where the OS has direct access to your hardware. Your choice, virtual vs hard drive install, should depend on how you want to use Windows XP. I would not recommend installing Windows XP as a virtual guest if you intend to use it for things that require 3D acceleration like gaming. Video playback performance will not be stellar either in a virtual guest.

You can boost the performance of your guest by allocating more memory to it.
How much base memory have you assigned to your guest?
I gave my Windows XP guest 2048 MB.
My Windows 7 32 bit guest has 3072 MB.

You can also increase your guest's video memory to 128 MB. My Windows XP guest ran fine with only 64 MB of video memory, but my Windows 7 guest needed more. If you want to increase the video memory of your guest to 256 MB you'll need to enable hardware 3D acceleration and hardware 2D video acceleration.

Read sections 4.4.1 and 4.4.2 of the Oracle VM VirtualBox User Manual you want to enable hardware 3D acceleration and hardware 2D video acceleration.
Here is the url for that.
4.4. Hardware-accelerated graphics

This shows you how to enable Aero in Windows 7. You can use this as a guide.
How To Enable Windows 7 Aero Effects Inside VirtualBox

Here is a post about Windows 7 performance as a VirtualBox guest on this forum.
Dismal windows 7 perofrmance as guest
I did not install the guest additions in Safe Mode. I don't have a need for basic Direct3D acceleration in a Windows guest. Windows 7 performance as a VirtualBox guest is not stellar.

I only keep Windows to run a few things I can't run in Linux, and the list is slowly shrinking.

[kdeuser]

@life0riley, point taken , but i need to use a native windows scenario in order to make certain apps work.

Video, is a prime function for me and a smooth play is vital. I got it to work more or less and live streaming was the problem , but on playback there was no delay.

It was then i thought yes, lets give these additions a go. I gave them a go and the results were less then terrible.

[kdeuser]

@vinnywright, would the following work work :

Create an extended partition to fill the whole drive , then install modified Kubuntu 12.04.5 on it - ( 4 partitions ).

Using Kubuntu live dvd , shrink the extended and make a room for a primary partition for xp.

Would this work.

[vinnywright]

@vinnywright, would the following work work :

Create an extended partition to fill the whole drive , then install modified Kubuntu 12.04.5 on it - ( 4 partitions ).

Using Kubuntu live dvd , shrink the extended and make a room for a primary partition for xp.

Would this work.

if I am reading you right ,,,,,,your talking about starting from scratch ??

yes/no

VINNY

[kdeuser]

Yes, that´s the general idea .

[kdeuser]

if I am reading you right ,,,,,,your talking about starting from scratch ??

VINNY

Yes, that would be correct.

[vinnywright]

OK then ,,,,,,,,,,,,If ,, I,,,were you ........

first decide how much room you will knead for XP ,,,,, you can be a bit on the large side as Kubuntu will be able to access files in the XP partition .

you have a 300GB drive so I will assume you want a lot for XP ,,,,,say 100GB ,,,,,,you can change all the partition sizes I suggest to your expected kneads.

FIRST ,,,,,get/make a live-USB/DVD of the ver. of kubuntu you want to install ..... and or a Gparted or parted magic live-USB/DVD

now boot the computer with the live-USB/DVD ,,,,,,,,ether the Kubuntu one or one of the parted ones.

delete all partitions on the drive (after saving anything you nead as all will be gone after this)

create 1 100GB primary partition at the start of the drive and format it NTFS . for XP

create 1 20GB primary partition for Kubuntu next and format ext4

now I do not see where you tell how mutch RAM you have ,,,,,,,,, if RAM is 1-2 GB make a linux swap partition (primary) of 4 GB ,,,,,,,,if you have more than 4GB of RAM you may not even nead a swap partition at all unless you like to suspend or hibernate .

now we have 3 primary partitions using 124GB of the drive ,,,,,,,,,,,,, so make the rest of the drive 1 big extended partition.

you should have around 175GB in the extended partition now ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,SO now you can make as many logical partitions in that extended partition as you wish/can fit .

you now knead to decide if you want more OS partitions ,,,,,, a home(for Kubuntu) partition or just storage for Kubuntu and whatever else you install .

I would make 1 more 20GB logical partition for 1 more OS(maby the next ver of Kubuntu) formated ext4 and the rest 1 big storage partition formated ext4.

I have goten into the habit of making my OS installs (Kubuntu) in small 20GB partitions and linking all the /home/me folders/directories to their name sakes in a large storage partition.

like so.........................................

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ sudo parted -l
[sudo] password for vinny: 
Model: ATA HGST HTS725050A7 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos

Number  Start   End    Size    Type      File system     Flags
 1      8225kB  323GB  323GB   primary   ext4            boot
 3      323GB   379GB  56.3GB  primary   ext4
 4      379GB   496GB  117GB   extended
 5      379GB   436GB  57.0GB  logical   ext4
 6      436GB   496GB  59.8GB  logical   ext4
 2      496GB   500GB  4295MB  primary   linux-swap(v1)


Model: ATA HGST HTS721010A9 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 1000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: gpt

Number  Start   End     Size    File system  Name     Flags
 1      1049kB  1000GB  1000GB  ext4         primary

sda1 is Ubuntu-14.04 and has it's ~/ (that's /home/you) in it........(it was the pre-installed OS on this box and originaly took up the hole drive)
sda3 is Kubuntu-14.04 and has it's ~/ in it as well ,,,,,,,,BUT the directory's all point to the storage drive sdb1

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ ls -l
total 33092
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vinny vinny    68725 Dec 26 12:20 blue.pdf
drwxr-xr-x 2 vinny vinny     4096 Dec  7 14:11 Desktop
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny       27 Oct 10 22:48 Documents -> /mnt/disk/kubuntu/Documents
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny       27 Oct 10 22:48 Downloads -> /mnt/disk/kubuntu/Downloads
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny       26 Oct 12 20:06 dwhelper -> /mnt/disk/kubuntu/dwhelper
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vinny vinny 33688483 May 18  2011 GoogleEarthLinux.bin
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vinny vinny    27437 Dec 26 11:55 insur.pdf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny       23 Oct 10 22:48 Music -> /mnt/disk/kubuntu/Music
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny       28 Oct 13 23:17 MyMachines -> /mnt/disk/kubuntu/MyMachines
drwxrwxr-x 3 vinny vinny     4096 Oct 10 23:22 None
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny       26 Oct 10 22:48 Pictures -> /mnt/disk/kubuntu/Pictures
drwxr-xr-x 2 vinny vinny     4096 Oct  9 18:01 Public
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny       23 Oct 12 21:12 steam -> /mnt/disk/kubuntu/steam
drwxrwxr-x 3 vinny vinny     4096 Oct 12 21:02 Steam
drwxr-xr-x 2 vinny vinny     4096 Oct 10 23:18 Templates
drwxrwxr-x 2 vinny vinny     4096 Nov 23 19:03 test
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vinny vinny      879 Nov  7 18:05 TetriAttack3-Data-Retail1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 vinny vinny       24 Oct 10 22:48 Videos -> /mnt/disk/kubuntu/Videos
-rw-rw-r-- 1 vinny vinny    65917 Oct 13 19:25 wallmart.pdf

vinny@vinny-Bonobo-Extreme:~$ mount
<snip>
/dev/sda3 on / type ext4 (rw,errors=remount-ro)
/dev/sdb1 on /mnt/disk type ext4 (rw)
<snip>

sdb1 is a terabyte drive for storage.

sda5 is Kubuntu-14.10 and sda6 has not been used as yet


OK so if we are done partitioning install XP ,,,,,,it's been a long time but I think you can install it to the partition and not just the drive ,,,,,,,if not you will half to shrink the partition XP will make on the drive and start from partition #2 above.

after installing XP install your Kubuntu making sure you get grub installed to sda ,,,,not sda1 or2 or,,,,,,

VINNY