[SandyStone]

I have Linux Mint Rebecca installed, which I want to keep. I have 3 partitions currently installed that fill the drive; root, swap, home.

 

I have have a XP virtual machine setup, but there is lag.

 

I need windows to run some software that is incompatable with Linux, so I have to do a dual boot system.

 

I would like to save my Linux installation, but if I cannot, when I run the windows, installation cd, can delete Linux and create a partition for windows and then reinstall linux.

 

Is there an easier way?

 

Thanks for your time.

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Hey there SandyStone,

 

First things first, assuming you are using VirtualBox; is have you installed the virtualbox guest additions? This should greatly improve the performance of the guest OS! If you have already installed guest additions and still experiencing lag, have you tried playing around with your cpu visualization options? I have found that some of the emulation settings provided can degrade performance if enabled. Its also hard to tell you exactly which settings as each PC will perform differently with different settings and will require some tweaking and playing around with (This goes for all visualization software, such as VMware (which also comes with their version of guest additions) , i have found on VMware sometimes setting the ram too high (Despite having more than enough memory for host OS) degrades performance as opposed to having assigned less memory). 

 

But if you're set on reinstalling and prefer a dual boot setup, you could re-size one of your partitions (most likely the /home, granted you have enough space) and use the freed up space for your windows boot. Although this could possibly have issues depending on your original partition configuration, if you had created all those partitions as primary and are using GPT or MBR partitioning table. From just making assumptions about your PC (Due to you wanting to install XP) you probably don't have UEFI supported motherboard. But this doesn't necessarily mean bad news as it could still support GUID and all this could even be irrelevant depending on your partition setup. 

 

Worst case is that you'll have to reinstall both OSes, but first give the re-sizing option a try... if you do reload everything from scratch install XP first, and then mint.

 

Let me know how things go, hopefully it was a simple VM config setting that needed changing or those guest additions.

 

Peace Out

[Spike]

Hey there SandyStone,

 

First things first, assuming you are using VirtualBox; is have you installed the virtualbox guest additions? This should greatly improve the performance of the guest OS! If you have already installed guest additions and still experiencing lag, have you tried playing around with your cpu visualization options? I have found that some of the emulation settings provided can degrade performance if enabled. Its also hard to tell you exactly which settings as each PC will perform differently with different settings and will require some tweaking and playing around with (This goes for all visualization software, such as VMware (which also comes with their version of guest additions) , i have found on VMware sometimes setting the ram too high (Despite having more than enough memory for host OS) degrades performance as opposed to having assigned less memory). 

 

But if you're set on reinstalling and prefer a dual boot setup, you could re-size one of your partitions (most likely the /home, granted you have enough space) and use the freed up space for your windows boot. Although this could possibly have issues depending on your original partition configuration, if you had created all those partitions as primary and are using GPT or MBR partitioning table. From just making assumptions about your PC (Due to you wanting to install XP) you probably don't have UEFI supported motherboard. But this doesn't necessarily mean bad news as it could still support GUID and all this could even be irrelevant depending on your partition setup. 

 

Worst case is that you'll have to reinstall both OSes, but first give the re-sizing option a try... if you do reload everything from scratch install XP first, and then mint.

 

Let me know how things go, hopefully it was a simple VM config setting that needed changing or those guest additions.

 

Peace Out

[SandyStone]

Hey, I am still around.

 

I fidigited around with the vm memory allocation. The thing is my desktop Dell only has 4gb  RAM, and it is a pentium D, so I think this could be the source of the problem.

 

Anyway, I picked up a shiny new Dell laptop, and I want to dual boot it with Linux Mint 17.2. It currently has WIndows 8.1 installed. It aslo has GPT patitioning.

 

I have to back up my windows recovery partitions yet before I shrink the C volume.

 

So I created a bootable USB containing Linux Mint. On which I used Rufus, because it has the gpt (if that matters?) file system option. I used fat 32 as a file type, I assume this is okay.

 

My understanding is that I have to disable secure boot. Is there any other settings that I should know about before I proceed?

 

Thanks again.