XP & Linux on Laptop

Item 1. Boot in Windows. Shut off virtual memory on Windows. Control panel, system, properties, advanced, performance settings, advanced, virtual memory, change set to 0.

Item 2. Defrag the disk. Control panel, computer management, disk defragmenter.

Item 3. See how much of the NTFS partition you can "steal" by looking at were the last file is physically sitting on the disk by looking at the bar graph. Make a logical guess and leave some space at the end.

Item 4. Boot with Linux install disk and use QtParted to shrink the NTFS partition size and then create your new partitions in the unallocated space.

I had a hard time with this and had to use Partition Magic to prep the disk then I installed linux in the free-space the first time I did this.

Cheers,
Dave Brown

If you have it, yes.
But you still need to turn off virt mem & defrag to get a better idea of just how much space you can shrink the partition. The area used by virt mem is not always in a convenient spot to make a division of an existing partition & if it is too far up the disk, even part. magic won't be able to shrink down the partition enough to make you happy.

Cheers,
Dave Brown