Thank you. I am going to have to think on this very hard before I contine. I would like to at least be able to have a duel boot system. But I dont know if that will work. I have at least read one instance where somone had xp on there comp and tried to install a linux distro and there copy of windows was broken. I dont know the exact circumstances but I dont want to find out because I bought this computer from compaq and they did not include any disks. It can get really inconvient when they wont include a copy of windows. Because now if I want to be safe I will have to spend about $200 usd to get a copy of windows.

1. Remove your current 100 GB hd and put it somewhere safe.
This procedure keeps your original hd completely untouched and allows you to experiment with Knoppix.
If something goes wrong, you can remove the 250GB hd and install the 100GB hd back. (But note that I'm not 100% sure that it still works, so there can be some risk even with this setup.)
If I remove the first drive with xp on it and install the second the only thing I can think of it affecting is the BIOS, and even then I am not sure that would happen. If I remove the first hd then it should work..... I hope. Since that one contains my primary operating system I don't think it should be affected if I have to remove the second hd and reinstall the first. Again I hope. If there is anyting besides the BIOS that could be affected please let me know.

2. Install only the new empty 250GB hd into the computer.

3. Use your WindowsXP recovery-CDs to install XP to that hd.
question? when you say recovery cds do you mean like a full blown version of windows or the recovery boot cd's that can be created by windows?

. Use GParted LiveCD from http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php (30MB) to shrink the XP partition.
I wont worry about this step for now. My main concern is getting linux and windows to happly co-exist side by side in a duel boot config. If I cant do that then maybe I can just put knoppix onto the second hd and when I want to use either knoppix or windows xp I can connect one hd and disconnect the other. But this would be less than ideal. I do have other distros that I got from places like linux magazine. I might try but only as a last resort. I was really going to work with knoppix befor I tried anything else. But heres the ones I have: Mandriva Linux 2006 it's got it's own magazine, and I have Open SUSE Slick. You not by chance at all familar with these are you?


I would like to make a duel boot system but I would be lying if I did not say that this makes me a little un-easy and want to hesatate. I know that if I can pull this off I will be that much closer to being able to ditch windows. Because I will be using another operating system wich will allow me to get experience and confidence with it. Again thank you for your help.