On Thu, 2010-03-25 at 10:12 -0400, John E. Perry wrote:
On 03/25/2010 09:27 AM, Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/03/25 04:51 (GMT-0400) John E. Perry composed:
I have a laptop (hpdv6000) ...... 1-Anyone who buys any system new should insist that true installation media either be provided, or an available option, as insurance against the many HDs that die prematurely, ... Check with Lenovo about availability of true installation media, which should be available at nominal cost as an alternative to "restore" media. My hp (:-) laptop came with both a recovery partition and a dvd. It wasn't until I bought a new HD and tried to install xp after partitioning and installing opensuse that I found out that "recovery" doesn't mean "installation". The dvd told me that it was going to "restore my system to the original software configuration". I had no idea that meant "wipe the new HD, make a recovery and a single system partition, and copy xp onto the new system partition". Previous episodes with hp have left such a bad taste in my mouth
All OEMs are the same way; this is nothing specific to HP.
2-Systems that ship with no installation media often have some utility that enables you to burn your own installation media from the installed system. It did. The dvd I burned using the utility is exactly like the dvd that came with the laptop.
This is normal and expected.
3-AIUI, utilities exist, not provided by Micro$oft, to modify installation media, that enable installation from any compatible original media and any valid installation key, compatible meaning e.g. a Professional key must be used with the Professional XP media see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLite_and_vLite OK, so I do indeed have an xp install disk that I bought for my wife's computer, but others' comments seem to say that won't help. I'll look into the link you gave to see if it might help. Thanks.
VMware provides many tools for migrating a physical system into a VM. Remove the HD, install another into the laptop, install openSUSE, install VMware, then connect the old HD via USB and use the migration tools. -- Adam Tauno Williams <awilliam@whitemice.org> LPIC-1, Novell CLA <http://www.whitemiceconsulting.com> OpenGroupware, Cyrus IMAPd, Postfix, OpenLDAP, Samba -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org