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Installing XP on Zorin hard drive

Ranman

Thu Oct 02, 2014 4:23:17 am

Running Zorin 9 Lite on a solid state hard drive on a Thinkpad T40. Used the forecepae option and the installation went well. I'm happy with the way Zorin is set up and everything seems to be running. I want to partition off part of the hard drive, install Windows XP and make the laptop dual bootable. Only way I can think of is to do a fresh install of XP then re-install Zorin. Is there a way of doing this without overwriting Zorin?

Swarfendor437

Thu Oct 02, 2014 11:52:44 am

I wouldn't know where to begin on SSD drive but quick question - did you format SSD to ext2 and 'trimmed' before installing Zorin? Ideally Windows should always be placed on first partition - I have seen it done the other way round but it can break later down the line. I would question your need to install XP (so long as it is off-line) and if it is a base version of XP you may not get it to install to SSD! :D

Ranman

Thu Oct 02, 2014 12:01:36 pm

The new SSD was partitioned and formatted with Windows XP, but XP wasn't installed. Zorin was and the drive works well - 30 seconds to boot up and about 5 seconds shut down. I manually trim it with fstrim. Not sure what the ext2 command does. I'll have to check that out.

Swarfendor437

Thu Oct 02, 2014 10:57:53 pm

ext2 is the file system - by default Zorin uses ext4 a journaling file system. XP on netbooks that had SSD's in them used FAT32 Windows XP Home (non-journaling system). Ext4 FS will effectively shorten the life of an SSD! ;)

larryag99

Thu Oct 09, 2014 1:00:34 pm

I have the same request... sort of. I have a desktop system running Zorin Ultimate. Drives (two 1-TB HD's) were formatted prior to installing Zorin. I installed Zorin, and its working fine, now I wanted to install the beta-version of Windows-10 to try it out. Wondering if there is a way to either partition the boot drive at this point for dual-boot, or, set up the secondary 1-TB drive for Windows partition and installation. In the end I would like to be able to boot into either Windows-10, or Zorin.
Possible??? If so, any thoughts on how to accomplish this? There is noting of value on either drive, so I guess the easiest way would be to load the Windows disk and install Windows (effectively removing Zorin), then re-install Zorin, selecting the dual boot option. Anything I should be cautious about going the re-install route, like file system type mentioned above for the SSD (keeping in mind my drives are conventional HD's) ?

Swarfendor437

Fri Oct 10, 2014 11:57:57 am

Please start a new thread! Then I will answer!

viewtopic.php?f=3&t=7393

Pierre

Sat Oct 11, 2014 10:37:02 am

the preferred way is to install XP first & then the Zorin O/S,
( coz a win O/S won't recognise a 'nix O/S :cry: )

if done the other way, then the 'nix boot-loader has to be re-installed. ..
- with either way, some - pre-partitioning - would be in order.