I have a new HP zv5360us laptop, NTFS partition with Windows XP on it. When I try to install Mandrake 10.1 It refuses to resize the windows partition. Am I going about this wrong. I know linux will run on it as pclinuxonline cd runs ok. I just can't get an xfs partition set up. Any ideas? TIA,
Dennis M. linux user #180842
Dennis; I have the HP ZD7000 laptop, so I have an idea of what you're going through. Your laptop should have included a set of CD's from HP which include WindowsXP.
I tried setting mine up the same way you're doing, but it was a major PITA to do, and I wasn't very happy with the final results. Assuming that you don't want to have any more hassles with Windows than you're rightfully entitled to (Grin!), I'd strongly recommend that you save whatever data might be important and start from scratch.
If you didn't receive the CD pack with your laptop, you should be able to burn a copy of the stored "Rescue Images" that are currently on the hard drive, and I would suggest you burn a copy of them a.s.a.p.! Since you don't know what might happen with the laptop down the road, it would be a smart idea to have a copy of the WindowsXP images in case your hard drive dies on you.
After several attempts to get my unit working to my satisfaction, I re-partitioned my hard drive, losing Windows in the process. Starting with a fresh installation of our favourite OS, I installed Mandrake as my second OS by creating a blank partition (roughly 10GB's) as the first partition and leaving it alone, then I continued with a normal Mandrake setup. When I got to the section of the Mandrake install concerning Lilo, I had it install itself to the Master Boot Record on "/hda".
The "/" (root) partition was set to 6 GB's (ReiserFS), then came a Swap partition (about 800 MB's), and a "/home" partition of 2 GB's was also set as ReiserFS. Even taking into account the fact that my laptop has an 80 Gb drive, I left my Mandrake partitions that small.
The remainder of the hard drive was left blank (for the time being).
Many of the big PC companies (HP, Compaq, Dell, IBM, etc.) like to provide you with "Quick Restore" CD's or images (stored on your harddrive), but in many cases those images are specially modified images that include Windows and any third-party software that they've arranged to include.
These aren't the pre-installation versions like you'd find on a retail CD. They're a post-installation version which was created by HP or whoever. In essence, they perform a full install of Windows, MS Office or MS Works, etc., on one master hard drive, then they create an image of that master install and copy it to thousands of PC's or laptops.
Those Quick-Restore images are similar to a Norton Ghost image and when you use them, they're designed to use the first partition of the drive. In most cases, the first partition is actually the entire drive, so they essentially try to install themselves across that first partition.
However, if your hard drive is already partitioned, they only use which ever partition is first on the drive.
Getting back to my partitions, this means that the 10GB blank partition that I created at the front of the drive is the one that the Quick-Restore CD's will see, so it installs itself to that partition.
Once you've finished installing Windows to that first partition, either using a Quick-Restore CD or by doing a normal install of Windows, the hard part is done. Since the restore image was originally setup using NTFS, that first partition is automatically formatted as NTFS. If your CD's include a normal (and not a Quick-Restore image) version of Windows, you'll see that the default or suggested formatting is also NTFS.
Remember to leave the remaining unused space on your hard drive alone for the time being. We'll get back to that in a bit.
The nice thing is that the restore or full install methods won't do anything to your Master Boot Record, since Windows detects that the Master Boot Record is already in use. Lilo is already installed there. That means that the next time you boot the laptop, Lilo will still be there, and will only show you the Mandrake-Linux option.
No problem. That's exactly what should be there. Once you've booted back into Linux, start up your Mandrake Control Center (a.k.a. MCC), and add the 10Gb Windows partition by creating a mount point for it. You're not obligated to use the Mandrake default mount-point, so feel free to be creative. Just don't mount it inside the "/root" home folder!
Now, the last partition. My HP laptop came with an 80GB drive. Since Microsoft is trying to deter people from using FAT32 partitions with WindowsXP, they've Windows so that it won't format a FAT32 partition that's larger than 32GB's.
Windows still accesses FAT32 partitions or drives that are larger than 32GB's with no hassle whatsoever, but Microsoft simply changed the format limits of WinXP so that it refuses to format any larger than that.
If you ended up with the 60 or 80 GB drive in your laptop and you've used the partition sizes I mentioned above, Windows will not format the remaining space as FAT32.
But Mandrake will! Leave it to Linux to solve a Microsoft problem! LOL!
By using Linux to format your remaining space as FAT32, you'll be able to access it from Mandrake AND from Windows without any problems. Once that's partitioned, formatted and mounted in MCC, remember to update Lilo as well. That way, Windows will be added to your boot list in Lilo.
If you create a "My Documents" folder on that partition, you can tell Windows to move it's My Documents folder to the same place by right-clicking the My Documents on your desktop, clicking on Properties, and changing the location.
In KDE's Control Center, you can select the same folder for your user's "Documents" folder under "System > Paths". Microsoft Office and Microsoft Works will both use the new location by default.
In short, you'll have WindowsXP installed on a 10GB partition formatted with NTFS, followed by about 9GB's used up by Mandrake, and the remaining space on the drive will be a large FAT32 storage partition that both OS's can easily access.
The main Windows partition can be used as a dedicated space where only your programs are installed and all your user data (MP3's, Email, Documents, etc.) is stored on that last FAT32 partition. If you ever need to re-install Windows (which you probably will, sigh!), at least it won't cost you anything you've downloaded.
Programs like Mozilla Thunderbird can be configured to use the storage partition to store your profile and mail, which can then be accessed by Mozilla-Thunderbird on your Linux partition. Same emails, same accounts, same filters, everything.
Hope that helps.
-- Mr. Geek Registered Linux User #190712
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