So I have XP right now, but I'm thinking about adding Vista and/or Ubuntu as a dual boot. However, XP doesn't have the nice Partition manager that Vista does. I'm thinking of using Geek's guide on gparted. Will I still be able to repair my installation with the XP disc the same way Vista can be repaired? Is there another partition manager I can try that anyone else prefers?
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Partitioning
(7 posts)
> "Will I still be able to repair my installation with the XP disc the same way Vista can be repaired?"
In what way would you need to repair your XP install?
If you install Windows Vista after Windows XP is installed then the Vista setup will automatically install the Vista boot loader and configure it to have entries for both XP and Vista.
There should be no need to repair anything.
For shrinking partitions gparted that should work just fine.
Compared to Vista's Disk Management though it does have a couple flaws:
1. You have to reboot to a livecd to use it as there isn't a Windows version.
2. gparted can do many more things then Disk Management that can cause Windows to not boot.
Like say creating a partition before an existing Windows partition will likely cause errors when booting the existing install as the existing partition is now #2 instead of #1 in the partition list.
Well the article says that I may or may not be able to boot after resizing partitions:
http://www.howtogeek.com/howto.....partition/
I'm not sure why this is. I don't imagine it would be much of a problem but I want to make sure.
But thanks for telling me about Vista's bootloader. That's nice to not have to worry about.
From looking at that article I'm think "The Geek" must have made a mistake using GParted as I've used GParted and not had that problem.
I'll have to try setting up a virtual machine and try following the steps in the article to find what the mistake was.
As for resizing partitions I just remembered seeing a way listed on a web site that showed how to boot from the Vista disc and shrink existing partitions.
I'll look for that article later and post it. That way might be safer then GParted.
Edit: I just found it.
It's the article at http://apcmag.com/5485/dualbooting_vista_and_xp
Just follow the part between "Prepare Windows Vista" and "Now, install Windows XP". That part deals with shrinking an existing partition with the Windows Vista disc.
Note: That way will shrink the partition by a certain amount decided by diskpart. Not a big deal though as once Windows Vista is installed you can then expand the partition to the right size.
I'll look in the help for the diskpart anyway and see if there is a way to specify the exact amount to shrink by and post it later.
To update my above post information if when that article says to run the command shrink type help shrink first to find the parameters and then you can use them to shrink it to the size to want.
On Partition Magic, I'm sure that will work too, I just usually avoid recommending programs that cost money if the job can be done without it.
On the separate partitions idea, I think it's usually recommended for sharing data between OSes.
Myself I have a machine that stores Vista and the data on one partition and XP on another. XP reads the data from the Vista partition just fine.
I'm not really sure how good of idea that is but it seems to work at the moment.
Note about partition sharing: When you boot Windows XP if it finds and loads your Windows Vista partition it will delete all the System Restore points and Previous Versions on it, I would guess because the older NTFS driver doesn't understand the shadow space so it just deletes it.
I think from reading the NeoSmart forums the NeoSmart people are developing software to hide the Vista partition from Windows XP so that doesn't happen. I think there is a beta of it on the NeoSmart forums.
In that case you would need a separate partition for data.
Edit: The program is Vista Hide and Seek and it's at http://neosmart.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1341
It's actually alpha software so it's not for general use yet.
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