How to install Windows 8 in a system which has Ubuntu 12.04 and Windows 7 installed already?

Question

I have a system in which I have installed Windows 7 first. I then installed Ubuntu 12.04 to the system. Now, the boot manager is GRUB Loader and everything works fine as Ubuntu detected that Windows 7 has been installed already.

Now, I would like to install Windows 8 too. I plan to install using a bootable USB stick(doesn't matter which medium I prefer though. Does it? ). I have done some research and all the materials I can get state that I cannot practically install Windows 8 after Ubuntu and get all the three OSs to run. Can you help?

I want all the three Operating systems to work perfectly.

Answer 1

(I don't know if windows 8 has the same instalation behaviour as windows 7, but it should be almost the same)

You can install it in a separate partition, but it will allways remove GRUB no matter what you do. You just need to repair and reinstall GRUB from a live cd after windows installation.

EDIT: BTW, there is a limit in the maximum number of primary partitions. If im not wrong that number is 5. If windows 7 is "sda1", and ubunutu is sda2 sda3 and sda4 (/,/home and swap), then it should be possible, but if you have one more primary partition, then its impossible

EDIT2: Wrong, the limit is three primary partitions, the rest must be extended

Answer 2

You can have 4 primary partitions on your hard drive before you need to create logical partitions, which extends it out almost limitlessly to the extent of your hard drive's capability.

As for the question, any time you install any version of Windows, it will break Ubuntu's boot loader GRUB. You can install Windows 8 on a partition that has been resized through GParted (boot from Ubuntu live CD or live USB) but will then need to repair your GRUB.

This process can be a pain and requires some knowledge of Partition locations, Mount Points, and Terminal commands.

For your ease, I will include the command here to be entered into Terminal. Replace XXX with the location of your partition. This can be found out from Gparted (typically /dev/sda1 or something along those lines).

sudo grub-install /dev/XXX

This will install GRUB from the standard repositories Ubuntu provides in their distribution. The command above will install GRUB to your partition and attach itself to the mount point for booting.

Keep in mind that doing this will bring you back to a GRUB boot loader. If you are trying to use another boot loader, be specific with the setup you are wanting to use in order of first to last OS (e.g. as a recommended setup: Windows 8/Windows 7/Ubuntu).