Dual boot Acer Aspire One 110/150 with Linpus & Windows XP

You have an Acer Aspire 110 or 150 running the Linpus operating system and you now want to add Windows XP so that you have a choice of operating systems on boot up. No problem! The original, unabridged version of these instructions (e.g. how to triple boot) can be found here.

Required items:

1. one USB pen drive of 1Gb capacity or greater for the Linux partitioning tool
2. an external USB DVD drive (or the HD-DVD drive from an XBox 360) to load the Windows operating system with
3. a copy of Windows XP (Home, Pro etc) and its key. Windows must be SP2 or later. Earlier versions give problems. You can 'slipstream' SP2 into your original Windows XP CD with nlite.
4. another computer to prepare for the installation and to help you if you get stuck (Google)
5. some software (listed on the next page) that is free to use
6. no sticky-backed plastic or washing up bottles are required unless you still watch Blue Peter

Be familiar with the instructions that came with the AAO about recovery. You can either recover an AAO using an external DVD drive or by making a USB drive bootable (this is done by the recovery program that comes with your AAO). Use a recovery "disk" in the event you get to a point where you cannot continue. This will bring your Acer Aspire One (AAO) back to the factory-fresh format, exactly how it was when you first bought it. Bear in mind that if you have made any changes to the Linpus environment (settings, applications) since you purchased the unit they will be lost if you have to recover.

The 1Gb pen drive will be used to create a "live disk" of a basic Linux operating system. You will be able to boot from this pen drive without affecting anything on the AAO's hard disk (unless you choose to do so). It contains a program called Gparted which is a Linux disk partitioning tool.

The external USB DVD drive is used to load the Windows operating system. Although there are means of copying the required information to a hard disk this is not covered in this guide. An new external USB DVD drive (it will probably be a DVD writer) will cost around £30.