[opensuse] Inspiron 9400 question about shrinking partition
I just got a dell inspiron 9400 core 2 duo and it has windows xp installed. If I shrink the partition and install opensuse will this affect the windows xp installation, such as not make it bootable. Any thoughts or assistance is greatly appreciated. John -- Registered Linux User 263680, get counted at http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 16 November 2006 18:47, John Pierce wrote:
I just got a dell inspiron 9400 core 2 duo and it has windows xp installed. If I shrink the partition and install opensuse will this affect the windows xp installation, such as not make it bootable. Yes...
The reason is that Suse's partition shrinking software does not correctly support NTFS partitions, and XP is usually preinstalled on an NTFS partition. The think you want to do is use another package (Partition Magic) to shrink the NTFS partition *first* and then install Suse. -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thu, 2006-11-16 at 19:05 -0600, M Harris wrote:
On Thursday 16 November 2006 18:47, John Pierce wrote:
I just got a dell inspiron 9400 core 2 duo and it has windows xp installed. If I shrink the partition and install opensuse will this affect the windows xp installation, such as not make it bootable. Yes...
The reason is that Suse's partition shrinking software does not correctly support NTFS partitions, and XP is usually preinstalled on an NTFS partition.
The think you want to do is use another package (Partition Magic) to shrink the NTFS partition *first* and then install Suse.
I have installed SUSE on machines that had WindowsXP with disks formatted as NTFS without any problems. The partition shrinking worked and the machines booted in WindowsXP or SUSE as advertised. Your mileage my vary. As ever, if you have valuable data, make backup first. Rudolf -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
The think you want to do is use another package (Partition Magic) to shrink the NTFS partition *first* and then install Suse.
Ok! I do not own partition magic, are there any reliable foss solutions for the problem? Since I do not have any windows installations I do not want to do away with this factory install, I want to tinker with the beast. I have been windows free since 1998. TIA John -- Registered Linux User 263680, get counted at http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 16 November 2006 19:14, you wrote:
Ok! I do not own partition magic, are there any reliable foss solutions for the problem?
Since I do not have any windows installations I do not want to do away with this factory install, I want to tinker with the beast. I have been windows free since 1998. Due respects to rudolf... but NTFS is not supported (well its supported in read only mode) and the shrinking software on the system I setup for my daughter clobbered the NTFS partition... end of story.
I had a similar problem with my daughter's HP s7400n slimline system that we setup for college. She wanted to keep the XP partition (just in case) to tinker with it, or in case she ran into a situation at the college where something would only *work* there... anyway, she mostly does Suse 10 and has never needed the partition, but I will relay the story just the same. As stated earlier the shrinking software *did not* handle the partition correctly and it would not bootup again. Fortunately for her, HP provides a backup partition that can be loaded from bios that will restore the factory preload in case of catastrophe... and that worked fine. What I did for her was to format the shrunk partition and then install Suse 10 on the remainer of the drive. Then I used DD to save the MBR to a file. Then I reinstalled the factory software from the backup partition, and then restored the Linux MBR. This all worked fine. As it turned out... she is now M$ free as well and has finally lost her paranoia about *maybe* needing windoze... so it was a lot of work for nothing... she is happily writing papers with OpenOffice, emailing with Thunderbird, and Surfing with Firefox... and she has *never* had a system crash yet... Go for it... wipe out the XP partition... you'll never miss it. Oh, by the way, did I mention that her factory preloaded software from HP was almost entirely a marketing gig????? Yeah, most of the system was a teaser... try this for a while then download the real thing for some more BIG bucks... and most of it (except the lame windoze games) come preloaded and fully functional in Suse 10. Go ahead... tinker with it... then blow it away. -- Kind regards, M Harris <>< -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 16 November 2006 19:14, John Pierce wrote:
The think you want to do is use another package (Partition Magic) to shrink the NTFS partition *first* and then install Suse.
Ok! I do not own partition magic, are there any reliable foss solutions for the problem?
Since I do not have any windows installations I do not want to do away with this factory install, I want to tinker with the beast. I have been windows free since 1998.
TIA
Hi John, the reality is that there is no risk free resizing. I did many dual boot installations and most of them went perfectly easy for computers that have only preinstalled windows. The resizing software refuses to do anything if NTFS doesn't appear clean. The newest status with Vista is here http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfsresize.html#vista -- Regards, Rajko M. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thu, 16 Nov, 2006 at 23:05:16 -0600, Rajko M wrote:
The resizing software refuses to do anything if NTFS doesn't appear clean.
- which bit me once; I got an HP zd8000 laptop, let the windows self-installer do it's thing. Proceeded to install 9.3: Resizing the ntfs partition failed due to the filesystem being fragmented or otherwise unclean. I then had to jump through a bunch of "chkdisk, reboot, chkdisk, reboot, defrag, chkdisk, reboot" -hoops, until ntfs was clean. After that, the resizing completed fine - and 9.3 installed. I never actually used the XP system much, though... /Jon -- YMMV -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Success, I defragmented the drive and downloaded the gparted live cd and used it to shrink the partition. All went well and I am sending this via firefox from opensuse 10.1. Only one annoying problem, but my with the help of the list and my friend google I will overcome it. See my post regarding wireless. John -- Registered Linux User 263680, get counted at http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 16 November 2006 22:17, John Pierce wrote:
Success, I defragmented the drive and downloaded the gparted live cd and used it to shrink the partition. All went well and I am sending this via firefox from opensuse 10.1.
Sweet! Congrats!
Only one annoying problem, but my with the help of the list and my friend google I will overcome it.
See my post regarding wireless.
Uh oh... :P -- kai www.perfectreign.com || www.4thedadz.com a turn signal is a statement, not a request -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 16 November 2006 16:47, John Pierce wrote:
I just got a dell inspiron 9400 core 2 duo and it has windows xp installed. If I shrink the partition and install opensuse will this affect the windows xp installation, such as not make it bootable.
I had no problems on my Dell Inspiron dual booting, until I upgraded from 9.3 to 10.0 and decided to wipe out Wintendo. On my much newer Gateway touch screen laptop, however, I had several problems. I eventually had to remove Linux altogether and reinstall Wintendo from the image disks. These newer fancy laptops seem to have wierdo hidden partitions and stuff. Mine had three partitions BEFORE I added Linux (which created three more). I ended up giving it away. Doesn't PM have a trial version you can use to see if it works? -- kai www.perfectreign.com || www.4thedadz.com a turn signal is a statement, not a request -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Thursday 16 November 2006 15:47, John Pierce wrote:
I just got a dell inspiron 9400 core 2 duo and it has windows xp installed. If I shrink the partition and install opensuse will this affect the windows xp installation, such as not make it bootable.
Any thoughts or assistance is greatly appreciated.
John -- Registered Linux User 263680, get counted at http://counter.li.org
Even if it did shrink it properly (and the Jury seems still out on that one) Dell makes such a mess of the hard drive with no les than 4 partitions that its probably not a great idea. I just got one of those machines as well, and upon looking at the partition setup and the dell restore disks, and the warning in the manual that some bits are not recoverable if you delete them (that silly dell media partition) I just decided to go get another drive and save the original against the day I decide in a moment of insanity to run Vista. Bet the same brand (about 95 bucks) and there's not even any fiddling with bios when you swap. Other hints on the 9400 and core 2 duo: If you got the ATI card stick with remastered 10.1. 10.2 no workie due to newer xorg disagreeing with the ATI drivers. Stick with SUSE, because some of the "ntU"/Debian distros do not come with a dual processor kernel (smp) and you have to re-compile the kernel to get smp support. -- _____________________________________ John Andersen
participants (7)
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John Andersen -
John Pierce -
Jon Clausen -
Kai Ponte -
M Harris -
Rajko M -
rudolf