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[tlug] Installing Windows after installing Linux



TLUG,

Despite my intentions, I find I am now in a situation where what I need to do is repartition my hard drive and put Windows on.

I briefly considered buying a second hard drive for Windows. But the drive I have is 250 GB, of which I'm unlikely to ever use more than 100 GB. And the cost of hard drives is enough to make me think it's not worth it.

So what I would like to do is shrink the current Linux/Ubuntu partition to free up about 50 GB of space for Windows.

That part seems easy enough. All I need to do is boot one of many versions of a Linux Live CD, and use one of many command prompt or Gnome based partitioning applications.

The tricky part is that I worried about Windows over writing GRUB or creating it's own Master Boot Record or something and me not being able to get at my Linux parition anymore.

It's been years since I've attempted anything like this, so my memory is hazy, but I do recall that Windows thinks of itself as the one and only OS on the system.

Looking on the web, every piece of advice I see is about installing Windows first, and then Linux second, which is as easy as pie because every modern distribution of Linux seems to smartly handle multiple OS detection.

Perhaps I'm using the wrong search terms, but I can't find any good advice about the other way around - starting with Linux and installing Windows second.

So I'm looking for warnings and advice about how to do this. Particularly with regard to how GRUB will be maintained.

If people scare me enough, I may go ahead and buy that second hard drive. But if I can be assured that installing Windows can be done without adversely affecting my Ubuntu installation, then that would be the preferred way to go.

--
Dave M G


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