What to do?

Well I've been reading up alot on installing xp and ubuntu at the same time. I put ubuntu as my primary OS and now I'm trying to install xp. I have done everything possible to get xp to install. I partitioned the HDD to fat32, NTFS, and xfs...None of them are recognized by the XP disk!!! Weird thing is that many people were having problems getting the XP disc to boot before ubuntu did. Mine works perfectly fine, all the blue screen runs smooth. Until it gets to the installatino part thats where it tells me that it cannot find any HDD at all... What can I do? I really need XP for alot of software for college, homeworks and such. Please help!

 

you need sata drivers..

or disable ahci in the bios

 

How do I do that? thanx for the reply man. My laptop is an hp DV2000 with vista as its manufacturer os. I just don't like vista and wanna go with the xp/ubuntu setup. I feel like my head is about to explode man. I read earlier on a post that it would just be better to install xp and ubuntu afterwards. I guess I should've paid more attention to that...

 

Did you give vista a chance? But as others said, if you want to force xp to work you need to force the sata driver in there during the install.

 

I did give vista a chance, it is a cool os and all. But after seeing how Linux works I just had to try it. I don't have my Recovery disc to go back to vista, I already have an XP pro disc with serial. I just don't know how to do what you guys are saying...

 

check out the guide in my sig, it will give you somewhere to start (not everything is going to be the same, but the steps to get the SATA drivers will be the same)

 

Switch the HD from "AHCI" to "Compatibility" in the bios, install XP, then install the driver to recognise AHCI, then switch it back.

 

Just a side note, in the future when you install Windows with Linux, install Windows first, then Linux.

 

Hey man, thanx for the help! I really think this is one of the best options I've had... Only thing is that all those programs can only be executed in windows (.exe). And the only thing installed in my computer is Ubuntu. I really want to keep ubuntu as my Primary OS but IDK if I will have to go and just install XP first and then Ubuntu. I read about this yesterday but I didn't know how overwhelming it could be. Thanx for the help guys, keep bringin em in

 

I did say this in my very first post guy! I might just have to do this then, cuz it really is a pain trying everything and for everything to fail.

 

Is that so grub can overwrite the windows bootloader? I thought there was a 'saying' that if you put an OS in the first partition that it boots faster compared to it being put in a later partition?

 

yah, thats so grub can overwrite the windows bootloader. If it was faster on the first partition compared to the second partition, its because the hard drive eye has to move a bit... not that much faster.

 

But can't you just use gparted and set the linux partition to be the booting one?

 

great, at least it helped someone

maybe? lol i dont know what you mean

 

Supposing you install Linux first, then Windows, the windows bootloader will take over from grub, right? All you need to do (theoratically), is to use gparted, and give the linux partition the option of boot again. the Grub will take over.

 

possibly, never done it before. In this case, i would just use the live cd to install grub again but this method could also work.

 

Oh yeah. Reinstall grub. Why didn't I think of that! :S

 

I generally install linux first, making my swap space the very very beggining of the drive. Then windows, then I just pop in my live cd and reinstall grub. It's not really that hard.

 

What about leaving Ubuntu on the whole hard drive and run XP in VirtualBox?

 

Alright guys well after looking everywhere and trying pretty much like 5 different methods I've just decided to go with a whole new and clean xp/ubuntu install. Only thing now is that I already have alot of things configured on ubuntu and wouldn't want to lose them. Is there a guide for me to remove ubuntu and then install xp and then ubuntu? I won't really need that much space for xp. I just need it pretty much for school, currently working on visual studio java and another one for doing e-commerce. I'm saying a good 50GB? I have a 250GB HDD and I wouldn't mind giving ubuntu the rest of the free space. I'm really digging this OS . I have an External HDD so I'm ready to listen and learn. I got the gparted editor cd for ubuntu, and I'm thinking of just backing up ubuntu(even though I don't know how YET). I tried doing the get grub list or whatever the code is to get that text file with all the information but mine wouldn't show anything. I don't know why this is... Please if anyone can help I would really appreciate it. This week was a hassle not having windows to run all those programs for school, but I just don't wanna change my ubuntu for anything!!! thanx ppl and hopefully I'll have a good outcome by tonight... take care and thanx all in advance

 

well, first off make a backup of all your data (go to your home folder then show hidden files by ctrl+H). All of your settings are stored in the hidden folders in your home folder, just copy those somewhere with all of your important data.

Next, boot up your computer with some kind of partitioning software, such as gparted (google will find this easily) and partition your hard drive how you want it.

Next, boot your computer with the XP install disk in the drive and select the partition you want to install on, then proceed with the install as normal (this wont overwrite ubuntu, the reason we backed up your data is just to be sure).

Once XP is installed, boot up your computer once again with the ubuntu live cd in. Hit esc once (i *think* this is how you get to the main menu, but if not just play around a bit until you get to the main menu which lists all the steps you took when you first installed ubuntu). When you get to that menu, look for "install grub" (or something similar) and proceed with installing grub. This will give you back the grub boot loader so you can choose to boot into XP or ubuntu.

hope that makes sense

 

What's the benefit of making swap first?

 

I have GParted already

I tried this as well, but the thing is that when I do the partition and then try installing xp, it will say "there is no drive for you to install this in" when I have already triied a partition with 80GB in, fat32, ntfs, and some other ones. XP requires fat32?Do i just format the whole 232GB of data that are available to me to fat32? is this what you mean by saying that it won't overwrite ubuntu? I just don't really understand what to do. I feel like Ive tried everything and still I am not getting it!

 

what does your partition table currently look like? It should look something like this:

| SWAP | LINUX (ext3) | empty (doesnt matter what it is formatted as) |

Then, when you are using the XP install cd it will ask you which partition you want to install on, pick the empty space. Then it will ask if you want to format this partition, say yes (if it asks what kind, pick ntfs).

but remember, in case something goes wrong, backup all your data.

You dont want to format the entire drive, just one partition for XP. (ie. dont format the partition you have swap or linux on)

 

ANd choose "Format to NTFS (quick)" or else it'll take ages. As far as I know, there's no difference between the (quick) and non-(quick) version.

 

Alright, there has to definitely be something wrong here. I went and did partitions of all kind, unallocated, fat32, ntfs, xfs... but none of them seem to work. Every time I go back to install xp it says that there is no driver up and it can't perform the installation. So I just decided to wipe out my whole HDD, since I had everything pretty much backed up in my external HDD. Now the real problem arised. After finishing up with the HDD wipe, I was waiting there for about an hour waiting for it to finish. As soon as it was done I was happy that I was finally gonna get xp and ubuntu together. Even when I restarted the computer it said that there was no operating system there, I put in the xp cd and it ran good. Then when it got to the installation part I pressed enter and it still said that there was no place for xp to be installed in!!!! So i went back and made an NTFS partition and tried it again, but got the same thing! Did I just mess up my HDD or what is going on? I really don't understand... I thought a wipe out would pretty much clear everything in the HDD and let me do whatever I wanted to it, but seems to me like that was not the case. Please help me with this, I really need to get this fixed ASAP. thanx for all replies, you guys ROCK!!!

 

hmm, does the XP installer even see your hard drive? If not, that means you need to redo the first part of the guide in my sig (the part with nlite).

The problem still sounds like the XP installer doesnt have the proper drivers to handle an sata hard drive.