If you’re installing Windows XP to a separate physical drive, do not disconnect the Windows Vista or Windows 7 drive, and do not change the drive boot order in the BIOS. It’s very important to make sure that this partition was created at the end of the drive, or else you might no longer be able to boot into Windows because your partition numbers and offsets have changed. It doesn’t need to be primary, and should not be active. Add a new partition located after the Windows Vista/7 partition you just shrunk.Use the partition manager to shrink the partition with Windows Vista/7 to make enough room at the end of the drive for Windows XP.
Download the free GParted Live CD or use a commercial partition editor, and boot into it.There are a couple of things you need to do:ĭo you already have a free partition or a separate physical disk that you can install Windows XP to? If so, skip on to the next section. The first thing to do is to get your system ready for installing Windows XP.
Prepping the Machine for an XP Installation If you follow these instructions, you should be able to add Windows XP to a system that already has a newer version of Windows installed – with minimal headache and no loss of data. Installing Windows XP on a PC already with Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8
