P
Pete B
I am currently running WinXP Pro on my stand-alone home PC, with the HDD
installation configured for XP as the only operating system. IOW, I only
have one NTFS partition on my HDD which contains the bootable XP operating
system. I also have a great amount of other MS and third-party Windows
software applications installed. (And I love XP pro too, this has nothing
to do with XP dissatisfaction, I think it is great.)
What I would like to do is to reconfigure the PC hard drive so that I can
install a second operating system (Ubuntu Linux). Is there any way to do
this without complertely removing XP, reformatting and repartioning the HDD
to two dual boot partitions, and reinstalling XP from scratch set for dual
boot? I cannot simply image the drive and redo it because that would just
reinstall the system the way it is now. I have a 120G HDD and I have about
70G free space now, so HDD capacity is not a problem. From what I have read
in the Help file and the MSKB, the only way to do this would entail losing
all my current software installations permanently, and above all I do NOT
want to go through the ordeal of reactivating my WinXP and other MS and
non-MS software licenses if I have to redo everything from scratch.
If it is not possible, I am considering two alternatives:
1) I could buy software like Partiton Magic or similar, and use that to
make virtual partitions and transform to dual boot. I actually have an
older version of Part Mag, which I intended to use back in my Win 98 SE
period on a previous PC, but I never actually used it because I was always
afraid it might end up causing a HDD meltdown nightmare somehow . Is that
software reliable for something like this if I were to get the current
version? Meaning is there any reasonable chance it would corrupt my HDD
rather than do what it is supposed to do, and would it in any way cripple my
system in some respect?
2) I have that old W98SE PC sitting around unused, an older but suitable P2
system, which I could simply redo by deleting the W98 and reformatting etc.
and make it a totally Linux machine, and I could then get the necessary home
network hardware to network it to my current PC so that it shares the
internet and printer capabilities of my present system. Would this be
preferable to the other two choices, even though I would have to buy the
wireless networking hardware for it? I really just want to learn about
Linux (I am the world's biggest MS fan so that is not the purpose here), and
I may find an occasional use for Linux sofware apps, but it is mostly just a
retired VB programmer's curiousity about the Wonderful World of OSS that my
son, who has the MS in CSG (Computer Science Geekery,) keeps touting to me
:=). And a sidebar dumb question: can you network a Linux PC to a MS system
like that, does Linux have the same capability that MS does for such stuff?
Any help or advice would be appreciated. Of the two alternatives, I would
rather go with the PM software and use just the current PC than with two
actual PC systems networked together, because I may have other uses for the
old PC in the future.
installation configured for XP as the only operating system. IOW, I only
have one NTFS partition on my HDD which contains the bootable XP operating
system. I also have a great amount of other MS and third-party Windows
software applications installed. (And I love XP pro too, this has nothing
to do with XP dissatisfaction, I think it is great.)
What I would like to do is to reconfigure the PC hard drive so that I can
install a second operating system (Ubuntu Linux). Is there any way to do
this without complertely removing XP, reformatting and repartioning the HDD
to two dual boot partitions, and reinstalling XP from scratch set for dual
boot? I cannot simply image the drive and redo it because that would just
reinstall the system the way it is now. I have a 120G HDD and I have about
70G free space now, so HDD capacity is not a problem. From what I have read
in the Help file and the MSKB, the only way to do this would entail losing
all my current software installations permanently, and above all I do NOT
want to go through the ordeal of reactivating my WinXP and other MS and
non-MS software licenses if I have to redo everything from scratch.
If it is not possible, I am considering two alternatives:
1) I could buy software like Partiton Magic or similar, and use that to
make virtual partitions and transform to dual boot. I actually have an
older version of Part Mag, which I intended to use back in my Win 98 SE
period on a previous PC, but I never actually used it because I was always
afraid it might end up causing a HDD meltdown nightmare somehow . Is that
software reliable for something like this if I were to get the current
version? Meaning is there any reasonable chance it would corrupt my HDD
rather than do what it is supposed to do, and would it in any way cripple my
system in some respect?
2) I have that old W98SE PC sitting around unused, an older but suitable P2
system, which I could simply redo by deleting the W98 and reformatting etc.
and make it a totally Linux machine, and I could then get the necessary home
network hardware to network it to my current PC so that it shares the
internet and printer capabilities of my present system. Would this be
preferable to the other two choices, even though I would have to buy the
wireless networking hardware for it? I really just want to learn about
Linux (I am the world's biggest MS fan so that is not the purpose here), and
I may find an occasional use for Linux sofware apps, but it is mostly just a
retired VB programmer's curiousity about the Wonderful World of OSS that my
son, who has the MS in CSG (Computer Science Geekery,) keeps touting to me
:=). And a sidebar dumb question: can you network a Linux PC to a MS system
like that, does Linux have the same capability that MS does for such stuff?
Any help or advice would be appreciated. Of the two alternatives, I would
rather go with the PM software and use just the current PC than with two
actual PC systems networked together, because I may have other uses for the
old PC in the future.