Hi, I recently ordered a bunch of Ubuntu cd's and tried it out. I liked it but I still want Windows Xp for games and what naught.I tried dual booting it by resizing the partition through Partition Magic and the gnome partition manager. When I tried this it just cleared the partition that I had Windows installed on. Anybody know or have any ideas on how I can dual boot these two Operating Systems?

Don't play with partitions like that

What I do is setup multiple partitions on my hdd, usualy it's 7 partitions. First three for Windows and files and last four for 2 Linux Distros (Suse and Ubuntu) (2 partitons serve as a swap partitions and other 2 as main partitions). I would recommend you to reinstall Windows first, make desired number of partitions for Windows and you files, and leave rest of space unformatted.

Then whe you fire up Linux, you'll format unformatted space, you should do everything manually, no resizing or stuff like that. I recommend using ext3 or reiser, usually reiser is the fastest. After you install Linux, it will automatically install grub into mbr from which you will be able to pick your OSes, your Linux and Windows will be displayed there.

thats a bit more than you need

just install your windows XP normally, however you like.

if you're able to during the installation, limit the size of the windows XP partition to about half the hard drive.

when the installation for windows is complete, put in the ubuntu CD, let it install, and when it gets to the partitioner, it will have everything there that you need. if you need to resize it, it will let you. it will install the grub boot loader, and the swap partition during the linux installation.

WARNING: Ubuntu will take over as the main operating system, so no matter how you want it, Ubuntu will be the main.

theres a video on Google Video about it:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6104490811311898236

i had XP loaded on my laptop in one partition. all 20gbs were dedicated to XP. i started the install for ubuntu and let it automatically resize my disc for me and now i have 2 OS's on my laptop. i ran into this part by pure accident

yea, theres an option that has linux automatically edit the partition table, it just splits the drive in half and does it all automatically.

OK thanks everybody for the help I'll try your suggestions next time I format my drive which will probably be within the next few weeks .

Edited August 21, 200620 yr by Code-E

Actually, I've dualbooted since 5.10, and it is easier than you would expect. You can do in now without clearing Windows. In the install wizard, go to manual partitioning, and resize the NTFS partition to a smaller size. Then, create a 1 GB partition (if you can) and select 'linux-swap' as the FS. Finally, create one using ext3. It's actually very simple and safe.