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I know that there are so many posts on this subject but none of them worked for me.

I have Ubuntu on my machine and I would like to install Windows XP. As my CD/DVD reader does not work, I made a bootable USB from an ISO image using UNETBOOTIN. But when I try to boot in through the USB drive it says "BOOTMGR is Missing". I have searched a lot but could not find any solution to it.

My hard drive uses the Ext4 filesystem and my bootable drive uses NTFS. I have set the boot sequence as USB Drive in BIOS.

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  • I have successfully installed windows xp from external CD reader. Thanks all for your support. Jun 7, 2012 at 11:00

3 Answers 3

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It is better to install Ubuntu after Windows.

Why you are keeping your Hard Drive as ext4? It is better if you can keep the area to be used for Windows installation either non-formatted or as NTFS as you boot drive is.

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  • I installed ubuntu, which made the whole hard drive as ext4. Jun 5, 2012 at 16:45
  • While installing Ubuntu it was better if you would have kept the space you meant for Windows as non-formatted instead of making it ext4. Is it possible for you to delete the partition (where you want Windows) from Ubuntu so that it will become non-formatted.?
    – RinoTom
    Jun 5, 2012 at 16:54
  • I created a NTFS partition using gparted live and made this partition as primary. Now when I try to reboot from the bootable windows usb it still says "BOOTMGR is missing". I have no clue what do now.. Jun 6, 2012 at 6:45
  • Is UNETBOOTIN is the problem? Jun 6, 2012 at 7:13
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The below information is from here.

The first that we need to do is to create new partition for Windows and format it to NTFS. Exact steps to accomplish this depend on your HDD partition table e.g. there is one large ext3/ext4 partition for Ubuntu or there are several partitions for various distributions or mount points. Anyway you should use partition manager to create and/or format NTFS partition. You can use gparted. It is graphical and it just works (use ‘sudo apt-get install gparted‘ if you run Ubuntu/Debian).

Second you should backup your MBR record and restore it after Windows installation that silently erases existing bootloader and installs windows one, use “dd if=/dev/sda of=/mbr.bin bs=446 count=1” to save MRB into mbr.bin file and “dd if=/media/sda/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1” to restore it from file to HDD.

To sum everything up here are the steps:

  1. BACKUP ALL YOUR DATA!
  2. Create NTFS partition using gparted.
  3. Backup MBR using dd command e.g. “dd if=/dev/sda of=/mbr.bin bs=446 count=1″ (/dev/sda means your HDD).
  4. Boot Windows installation CD and install it onto newly created NTFS partition.
  5. Boot into Linux live CD e.g. Ubuntu Live CD.
  6. Restore MBR using dd e.g. “dd if=/media/sda/mbr.bin of=/dev/sda bs=446 count=1″.
  7. Reboot.
  8. Select Ubuntu in grub menu and boot it.
  9. Setup grub for Windows booting.

If after formatting the partition in NTFS mode it still giving the error then there is any problem with MBR on USB. Use wintoflash to make it bootable.

Also read this discussion where user overcome to make an USB to bootable.

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  • It should be your responsibility to properly quote content you copied apart from attributing it (which you did). Please remember for the future. Thanks!
    – slhck
    Jun 6, 2012 at 11:05
  • @slhck I will keep that in mind next time. Thanks for mentioning me for my weakness.
    – avirk
    Jun 6, 2012 at 14:02
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You cannot install Windows XP this way, see Installing Windows XP from USB pen drive for a working solution. It however probably requires a working Windows system to create the files on the pen drive.

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  • Do I need to uninstall ubuntu first and then install xp? Jun 5, 2012 at 5:48
  • What is wrong with using UNETBOOTIN? Jun 5, 2012 at 10:17
  • No, you do not need to uninstall Ubuntu. If you do not need Ubuntu anymore, just delete the Ubuntu partitions when installing Windows XP. You could also install Windows XP and keep Ubuntu. The latter however would require to restore GRUB afterwards, since installing Windows XP will overwrite GRUB, making Ubuntu unbootable temporarily. Nothing is wrong with UNetbootin but it is just unable to build installation media for Windows XP. Just check the list of supported systems. Windows XP is not there ... Jun 5, 2012 at 19:24
  • But here it says unetbootin.net, we can use windows xp iso file if we have already downloaded.. Jun 6, 2012 at 7:22
  • While UNetbootin is primarily intended for Linux distributions the websites indeed also mentions some unspecific Windows ISO, but I am sure it is limited to Windows Vista and newer, which have native support to be installed from USB mass storage. Windows XP was never meant to be installed from USB mass storage, so some changes/hacks are necessary. UNetbootin lacks support for these specific changes. Jun 6, 2012 at 17:27

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