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So my old PC that I got custom made when I was 15 is going through a complete makeover in the next week or so. I ordered a new 240gb HDD from Amazon earlier today and will start the process when it does comes in. Now I don't want to wipe my copy of XP because it's one of those 3rd party OEM installs which means that I can not repair my install of XP because I never got the boot disc when I bought it. The OS is pretty screwed up already so I thought of breathing new life into my old build by adding a second HDD and installing a copy of Lubuntu on it preferable the latest LTS release (at the time of writing this it's 14.04) and then dual boot it while keeping my XP install in tact as much as possible. So I would like to ask what do I need to know, or some helpful advice before I do this later on this month.

There's a really decent Windows XP SP3 Black Edition out there. Why not go for that?...

Or is it that you have paid for licenced programs on there that would be hard to reinstall?...

krssn wrote:There's a really decent Windows XP SP3 Black Edition out there. Why not go for that?...

Sounds interesting, I will have to look it up. Windows XP is pretty much a security loophole and it's only going to get worse just like Quicktime for Windows. That's why I want to get Linux onto that machine. I also love my Google Chrome too anyways.

krssn wrote:Or is it that you have paid for licenced programs on there that would be hard to reinstall?...

The only license program I paid for is Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007 which a simple phone call to Microsoft can remedy that. As for stuff that would be difficult to reinstall, it might only be the drivers for my graphic card since it also controls the network card on it.

Well when I installed XP on a different hard drive after previously having a Win7 install on the original hard drive, I broke the boot manager and it would only boot windows XP

I had to use the Win7 boot disc to repair the bootfiles, then reinstall windows XP with the original hard drives disconnected. Now I can select what HDD to boot from via bios

I'm not sure what precautions to take when dual booting linux. But just know it's not as straight forward as you might expect it to be

Goodluck lol

So your primary concern should be not overwriting the boot files. Because as you said you'd be up shit creek pretty good if you did that haha

Even though you're installing to another HDD, the boot files can still be compromised

dan1234 wrote:So your primary concern should be not overwriting the boot files. Because as you said you'd be up shit creek pretty good if you did that haha

Even though you're installing to another HDD, the boot files can still be compromised

That's what I was trying to avoid. I seen some tricks that were done where the Windows HDD with a blank one for Linux, then try to make Linux to boot up properly first by repairing Grub in a way so that it won't wreck the Windows installation. It's a little hands on with the wiring, but it's the only safe measure I can perform.

I have read up several guides on how to do it like these for example.
http://linuxbsdos.com/2012/07/23/dual-b ... rd-drives/
http://askubuntu.com/questions/312782/h ... -dual-boot

the other thing I read up somewhere is that if you end up swapping the cables so that sda1 would boot into linux while sdb1 would boot into Windows. What I am afraid of doing is if sda1 is Windows and sdb1 is Linux then if i were to repair grub it would alter my master boot record for XP since if I'll end up following through like that, I may end the risk of completely screwing up my windows partition tables. Now since I don't have a legitimate copy of Windows XP Home SP2 and might not have a way to fully backup my files that, this is going to be a new challenge I really need to get by. Not only that I'm taking it extra cautious because my screwed up my mother HDD by trying to repair the windows mbr one too many times on a already crappy Dell PC that we got from a PC recycling center. Now you see where I'm coming from?

I'm not 100% certain if this will apply to dual booting linux. But I'm pretty sure if you completely disconnect all hard drives except the hard drive you're installing linux to you will be fine, but you'd have to manually boot from the specific hard drive using the bios

This is probably a common question on a bunch of linux forums. You should take this issue there

If you want to install it really easily, I recommend using Wubi. It basically installs Linux like it's a Windows program (you can even uninstall it from Add/Remote Programs). Best of all, it handles all the messy boot loader stuff for you and you don't have to worry about damaging your Windows installation. Normally it's used to install stock Ubuntu but instructions on how to install Lubuntu can be found here.

dan1234 wrote:I'm not 100% certain if this will apply to dual booting linux. But I'm pretty sure if you completely disconnect all hard drives except the hard drive you're installing linux to you will be fine, but you'd have to manually boot from the specific hard drive using the bios

This is probably a common question on a bunch of linux forums. You should take this issue there

This isn't a problem to me. However I will try to start up a account there when I do get my HDD in the mail soon.

pcwzrd13 wrote:If you want to install it really easily, I recommend using Wubi. It basically installs Linux like it's a Windows program (you can even uninstall it from Add/Remote Programs). Best of all, it handles all the messy boot loader stuff for you and you don't have to worry about damaging your Windows installation. Normally it's used to install stock Ubuntu but instructions on how to install Lubuntu can be found here.

From what I've read up Wubi had been discontinued. I'm not unaware of it's existence since I have heard of it for at least a couple of years now. Not that I told you already but my mother and my younger brother would end up using this computer too when I am done. The only issue I may have is that my mother isn't exactly computer illiterate so she may end up cold booting the computer which I really don't want happening as that would lead to problems within the Windows partition which would not let Linux to boot up properly. What I'm trying to look for is to not touch the Windows partition as much as possible, the less the better. Wubi might work in my favor since my install of windows XP isn't as screwed as I make it sound to be so I don't mind installing programs onto it to extend the lifespan and security measures to get the job done.



I like what advice you guys are giving me so far. When I am all set to do so, I will stop responding here and try to pull it off while getting helpful advice and feedback elsewhere. Please don't stop helping me out quite just yet. I am encourage anyone else here to give me any more advice.

Alrighty then I just taken this thread thread to this link so I can end up getting more help with this since I just got my HDD today. If someone can help me out over there or can get me hooked up with someone who will be willing to take their time to assist me that would be great. Other than that if this thread is pretty much depreciated, then I wouldn't mind if someone can close it.