I am currently trying to work out how I can partition my hard drive so that I could make about a 9GB Partition to put windows on for school and such.
I have tried searching google but have had no luck, all help is highly appreciated.
Note: I have also taken a look at the partitioner that comes with suse and I cannot manage to work it out.
If you mean to install windows on an existing suse install? It can be tricky because windows will write to the MBR. So re-installing Grub is needed.
Couldn’t you just use Virtual Box? Run XP in a VM.
Re-installing GRUB is the easiest part.
Additionally, the partition to install XP on has to be primary and IIRC the first, primary partition has also the to be an NTFS or FAT (if you don’t install windows on the first, primary partition), otherwise windows will not boot.
ACK.
What you do to squeeze windows onto an early partition depends on what partitions exist now, on how they are oganised now and on which windows distro you want to install, vista or earlier (2000/xp).
So tell us your current partitioning by opening a console window and entering this command:
sudo /sbin/fdisk -l
and copying the whole dialogue back here.
And also tell us which windows distro you would like to install.
Disk /dev/sda: 203.9 GB, 203928109056 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24792 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x9a589a58
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 24419 196145586 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 24420 24792 2996122+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 24420 24792 2996091 82 Linux swap / Solaris
Disk /dev/sdf: 1023 MB, 1023933952 bytes
124 heads, 62 sectors/track, 260 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 7688 * 512 = 3936256 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x20202020
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdf1 1 21 80293+ 0 Empty
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdf2 21 261 919610+ b W95 FAT32
And I am attempting to install Windows XP Professional
also if your wondering the one of the partitions somewhere says “Windows 95 FAT32”, that’s just my ipod.
XP requires the first partition. You could arrange that with the program GParted, which you would run from a bootable CD. There’s two ways to do it that I can think of. Both require major editing of the existing openSUSE configuration files /etc/fstab and boot/grub/menu.lst as well as moving whole partitions on the physical drive. IMO it’s better to do these steps: