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[SOLVED] Installing windows over linux

Jan 14, 2022
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Hello There,
I am a tech enthusiast and have Ubuntu 21.10 installed on my only driver of 500 Gb.
My PC specs are as follows,
H/W path Device Class Description
=========================================================
system Vostro 3500 (To be filled by O.E.M
/0 bus Motherboard
/0/4 processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 4
/0/4/5 memory 64KiB L1 cache
/0/4/6 memory 512KiB L2 cache
/0/4/7 memory 3MiB L3 cache
/0/1d memory 4GiB System Memory
/0/1d/0 memory 2GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1333 MH
/0/1d/1 memory 2GiB DIMM DDR3 Synchronous 1600 MH
/0/0 memory 64KiB BIOS
/0/100 bridge Core Processor DRAM Controller
/0/100/2 display Core Processor Integrated Graphics
/0/100/16 communication 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI
/0/100/1a bus 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2
/0/100/1a/1 usb1 bus EHCI Host Controller
/0/100/1a/1/1 bus Integrated Rate Matching Hub
/0/100/1a/1/1/1 bus BCM2046B1
/0/100/1a/1/1/1/1 input Integrated Keyboard
/0/100/1a/1/1/1/2 input Integrated Touchpad [Synaptics]
/0/100/1a/1/1/1/3 communication Dell Wireless 365 Bluetooth Module
/0/100/1a/1/1/4 generic VFS300 Fingerprint Reader
/0/100/1b multimedia 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High
/0/100/1c bridge 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI E
/0/100/1c.1 bridge 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI E
/0/100/1c.1/0 wlp18s0 network BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network
/0/100/1c.4 bridge 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI E
/0/100/1d bus 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2
/0/100/1d/1 usb2 bus EHCI Host Controller
/0/100/1d/1/1 bus Integrated Rate Matching Hub
/0/100/1d/1/1/8 multimedia Laptop_Integrated_Webcam_2M
/0/100/1e bridge 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge
/0/100/1f bridge HM57 Chipset LPC Interface Control
/0/100/1f.2 storage 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 por
/0/100/1f.3 bus 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus
/0/100/1f.6 generic 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Therm
/0/101 bridge Core Processor QuickPath Architect
/0/102 bridge Core Processor QuickPath Architect
/0/103 bridge Core Processor QPI Link 0
/0/104 bridge 1st Generation Core i3/5/7 Process
/0/105 bridge 1st Generation Core i3/5/7 Process
/0/106 bridge 1st Generation Core i3/5/7 Process
/0/1 system PnP device PNP0c01
/0/2 system PnP device PNP0b00
/0/3 system PnP device PNP0c02
/0/5 generic PnP device SYN0604
/0/6 input PnP device PNP0303
/0/7 system PnP device PNP0c01
/0/8 scsi0 storage
/0/8/0.0.0 /dev/sda disk 500GB ST500LT012-1DG14
/0/8/0.0.0/1 /dev/sda1 volume 1023KiB BIOS Boot partition
/0/8/0.0.0/2 volume 512MiB Windows FAT volume
/0/8/0.0.0/3 /dev/sda3 volume 126GiB EXT4 volume
/0/9 scsi1 storage
/0/9/0.0.0 /dev/cdrom disk DVD-RAM UJ880AS
/1 power DELL TXWRR04

I have a pretty low spec laptop and want to install windows 10 to do ultra light gaming. How can i do that without erasing ubuntu or losing any data
Thanks
All help is welcomed ^_^
 
Solution
If you have a large enough partition under Linux, then you could use an app such as "gparted" to resize the root filesystem partition of Linux to something smaller. Then, in the space left over, you could create a new partition for Windows. However, Windows does like to be the first partition (if using a UEFI partition scheme, then UEFI would be first, followed by Windows). Installing Windows to the new partition would work, but then you'd need to reinstall the bootloader in Linux (e.g., using a Live DVD or thumb drive) to get the bootloader back to something which understands Linux (installing a Linux bootloader will detect the Windows install and likely just offer that as a boot option).

It does get complicated, and there is a lot...
If you have a large enough partition under Linux, then you could use an app such as "gparted" to resize the root filesystem partition of Linux to something smaller. Then, in the space left over, you could create a new partition for Windows. However, Windows does like to be the first partition (if using a UEFI partition scheme, then UEFI would be first, followed by Windows). Installing Windows to the new partition would work, but then you'd need to reinstall the bootloader in Linux (e.g., using a Live DVD or thumb drive) to get the bootloader back to something which understands Linux (installing a Linux bootloader will detect the Windows install and likely just offer that as a boot option).

It does get complicated, and there is a lot which can go wrong doing this. You really would want a backup first. Better yet, also work with temporary media at the start: Clone this drive to another drive (e.g., with dd), work on the new drive for partitioning, and then clone the edited new drive back to the original drive (if you can't use the edited clone directly, e.g., it is a loaner).

If you value what you have, then you must be very careful (or don't even attempt this). Even if you work on this daily there is a lot which can go wrong when manually shuffling partitions around.
 
Solution
If you have a large enough partition under Linux, then you could use an app such as "gparted" to resize the root filesystem partition of Linux to something smaller. Then, in the space left over, you could create a new partition for Windows. However, Windows does like to be the first partition (if using a UEFI partition scheme, then UEFI would be first, followed by Windows). Installing Windows to the new partition would work, but then you'd need to reinstall the bootloader in Linux (e.g., using a Live DVD or thumb drive) to get the bootloader back to something which understands Linux (installing a Linux bootloader will detect the Windows install and likely just offer that as a boot option).

It does get complicated, and there is a lot which can go wrong doing this. You really would want a backup first. Better yet, also work with temporary media at the start: Clone this drive to another drive (e.g., with dd), work on the new drive for partitioning, and then clone the edited new drive back to the original drive (if you can't use the edited clone directly, e.g., it is a loaner).

If you value what you have, then you must be very careful (or don't even attempt this). Even if you work on this daily there is a lot which can go wrong when manually shuffling partitions around.
Thanks for the reply, The problem is I dont have any other drive to back my data up and second this method is kinda risky so Maybe ill have to stick with this
 
As an aside to the backup issue. If you sign up for a Google account/Gmail you automatically get 15GB of space on 'Drive'. I am not sure if you can utilize said from your OS, I am fairly sure it still works with Chromium which will load to Linux. One Drive would be another to consider, but I don't use it thus have no idea how much space (if any) they offer free.
15GB isn't a lot, but could be enough for you to back up your mission critical stuff while you work this out.
 
As an aside to the backup issue. If you sign up for a Google account/Gmail you automatically get 15GB of space on 'Drive'. I am not sure if you can utilize said from your OS, I am fairly sure it still works with Chromium which will load to Linux. One Drive would be another to consider, but I don't use it thus have no idea how much space (if any) they offer free.
15GB isn't a lot, but could be enough for you to back up your mission critical stuff while you work this out.
Thanks for the options Punkncat
Now that i am not thinking of messing with the OS thing i am not doing it . Thank you anyways