Summary: Can XP be installed second?

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On Sun, Apr 24, 2005 at 12:40:01PM -0500, Martin Maney wrote:
> I've been trying to avoid it, but I must, finally, setup a dual boot
> with XP for compatibility testing.  It would be vastly more convenient
> if I could install XP in available space on the existing setup without
> trashing the Linux system already in place, but all the writeups I've
> found suggest that this is at best difficult, perhaps impossible (at

Thanks to all, even those who suggested various workarounds that were
well out of bounds (but then I didn't mention, eg., that my first
thought was slapping a spare drive in, but these cursed cases have *no*
internal expansion for storage).  :-)

After getting a couple of replies that suggested that XP might be no
worse than any Windows install, I realized I had a more or less
expendable laptop (an I8K for those keeping track), and it had an
unnecessary 8G primary partition, so I tried it on that.  It Just
Worked, albeit more slowly and with more mid-install pauses where you
had to pat it on its pointy little head than, say, Ubuntu Linux (which
I had installed recently on this machine).  Blew away the MBR boot
code, but I always have a grub diskette handy\\\\\ somewhere around,
and fixing it was literally as easy as "setup (hd0) (hd0,1)" to restore
the grub setup previously in use.  XP seems to be fine with being
booted by the usual "chainloader +1" hack.

Oh, and despite my concerns, shared by some respondents, Dell's
reinstall CD seems to be a not much modified OEM install disk - it adds
a few Dell-specific item to the menus as far as I can see.  YMMV.

Thanks, folks!

-- 
In high-resolution print typography, designers enjoy considerable freedom
and control over the articulation of this [font size] range. In
low-resolution screen typography, designers don't.  -- Todd Fahrner
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