Multibooting with XP and Vista?

[2009Prius]

I have a laptop that already duel boots to Vista and XP. Is it possible to add Ubuntu to a 10 GB unused space on the hard drive?

Some more details: It came with Vista on one partition and factory backup on another. I added a partition for XP and another one for general storage. Now I have shrunk the Vista volume to make the 10 GB blank space. Vista refuses to make a new partition out of that. Ubuntu installer can't seem to use that blank space either. :confused:

[Rubi1200]

You cannot use more than 4 primary partitions on most modern drives.

The best thing to do, in my opinion, is have 3 primary and 1 extended partition.

Within the extended partition you can then create a logical partition to install Ubuntu.

Ubuntu will happily install into a 10GB logical partition.

Hope this helps.

[2009Prius]

You cannot use more than 4 primary partitions on most modern drives.

The best thing to do, in my opinion, is have 3 primary and 1 extended partition.

Within the extended partition you can then create a logical partition to install Ubuntu.

Ubuntu will happily install into a 10GB logical partition.

Hope this helps.

Thank you this makes sense! I didn't know Ubuntu can be installed into a logical partition. Thanks again! :)

[Rubi1200]

I haven't tried all Linux distros, though I have played around with more than a few, but in my experience there is usually no problem installing Linux into a logical partition.

[2009Prius]

Quick update. The installer (10.04) did not like the logical partition, but it was happy to take unallocated space and made its own partition. Thanks for all the help! :)

[garvinrick4]

Logical partition must be in an extended partition (all the logical you want) it counts as a primary. As before me stated only 4 primary's to a HDD. Notice first 4 are primary and the rest are logical inside of sda3 which is the extended. Windows will only survive in a primary, Linux will survive anywhere.

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe7e8e0a0

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 26 203776 7 HPFS/NTFS
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 26 15985 128192511 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 15985 36006 160819192+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda4 36007 38913 23350477+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda5 21349 22814 11775645 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 15986 17387 11261533+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 17388 21348 31816701 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 22815 25394 20723818+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda9 25395 26707 10546641 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 26708 29385 21511003+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda11 29386 30683 10419200 83 Linux
/dev/sda12 30684 31992 10514511 83 Linux
/dev/sda13 31993 36006 32239616 83 Linux

[Rubi1200]

Quick update. The installer (10.04) did not like the logical partition, but it was happy to take unallocated space and made its own partition. Thanks for all the help! :)
You are more than welcome :)