It turned out to be a big problem for me when I wanted to install windows in my system recently. I had fedora 9i installed on my system. I wanted to install windows vista on it.
As windows does not recognise ext3 and other filesystems it is necessary to remove those partitions using linux live cd/dvd.
Here are the steps to install windows when linux is already installed on it.
Prerequisites: Windows DVD, Linux live cd/dvd
- Insert the live boot cd/dvd of Linux and boot the system from the cd/dvd.
- Use gparted (generally it comes with all the distros now) to see how the hard disk is being used.
Now you get two choice if you want to install windows and linux both or only windows.
When you want to install just windows:
- Use linux live boot cd/dvd to start installing linux.
- Use its partition manager to delete all the partitions and stop the installation in between.
- After you are quit the installation remove the live cd/dvd and insert the windows dvd.
- Now you can continue with the usual installation of windows.
If you want to keep linux and install windows also:
- Plan out how much space you wish to devote for each operating system.
- I would suggest give more space for windows and less for linux as you can access all windows drives using linux but not vice versa simply.
- For normal user a disk space of 25-30GB is more than sufficient for linux.
- Now using gparted shrink the disk space of linux drives. Dont shrink anything other than /home or / directory. Dont disturb other like swap area, /usr, /boot or any other as it might lead to an inconsistent state of linux distro.
- Format the available disk space and make it ntfs compatible.
- Now using windows dvd you can install windows on available free space.
Whenever you install window after installing linux, windows bootloader takes over linux bootloader grub and it does not recognize linux partitions. You will need to put grub to Main boot record of your system to be able to use both operating systems.
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