[ubuntu] dual booting with xp

[phillw]

Originally Posted by Paddy Landau Just a couple of points about what's been discussed. Yes, you can just go ahead and partition. BUT sometimes things go wrong for no apparent reason, and then you will be ECSTATIC that you backed up first! I recommend that you use CloneZilla to back up your entire hard drive (you'll need an external hard drive to back it up onto), so in the worst case scenario, you can just restore the entire hard drive. Before you partition your drive, on Windows run CCleaner then System Cleanup, then Auslogics Disk Defrag. It will aid the process. If possible, shrink your Windows partition using Windows software, because sometimes GParted causes problems. Wubi is an excellent way to become used to Ubuntu and to experiment. It installs into Windows as though it were just another program -- no worries about partitioning, GParted and so forth. But, Wubi does come with limitations, so use it only to experiment and decide whether you want to go serious. Then, if you wish to go serious with Ubuntu, uninstall Wubi and install Ubuntu properly.

The tend of this thread is to BACKUP !!, As one of the regulars has in his sig .... if you do not back up your important data, you're data is obviously not important.

As noted in my installation of Ubuntu - Make sure the ethernet cable is un-plugged if you have WiFi. I don't know if this has been fixed in 9.10, but it caused me soooooo much grief.

As I use a script for my backups (certain things I prefer to roll me sleeves up and get done the 'old-fashioned' way) I cannot state for any GUI app, I've always used boot from 'liveCD' and tell it what I want backing up. But, again, that's just IMHO

Phill.