[snip]I agree with you what I ended up using was partition magic so that I could keep my info on xp
1. Boot a Linux recovery floppy and run Linux's fdisk / cfdisk (DOS / Windows' fdisk won't do since it doesn't set partition IDs properly). List the partitions by typing 'p'. This will be one big NTFS partition in some Pavilions. In others (which came with no recovery CDs) like mine, it shows this partition + another small non-bootable primary partition at the beginning of the hard disk that XP will ignore just because its ID is type 12 (listed as Compaq recovery in fdisk's list of types).
2. Delete the big primary partition, and create a smaller primary one. Like the original one, mark it as NTFS and bootable, and put it at the beginning of the hard disk (if no recovery partition) or next to the recovery partition if there is one. Forget about the remaining empty space and don't create anything else.don't delete the partition what you are supposed to do is resize the partition to something smaller
3. Remove any hardware you may have added to your system, then recover by using either the CD set or the recovery partition.not really a good idea let both systems discover your extra devices.
4. Use fdisk again to create your fancy setup of data, swapping and other Linux partitions.this is the problem every rime you run xp recovery you will lose your linux.
What I did was under XP used partition magic resized the ntfs partition to allow for linux and it's swap partition.
I then loaded up the linux install and configured the unused partition to have a swap and fs for linux
really it's not that pain full to cohabitate OS's. Remember the recovery disk will erase the entire hard driver repartition the system so that it has one partition.
The recovery software may of course remove your new NTFS partition and then create its own, but after reading lots of help pages, faqs and that in HP's support site I'm quite confident that their software may just use the partition you have created providing that it finds this partition only, unformatted, primary, tagged as NTFS bootable, and located in the HD where expected (beginning of available space). Luckily, you can configure all of that with Linux's fdisk.
Also, have you ever recovered your system using HP's recovery thing? Did all your hardware work fine after doing it? All the apps too? I'm keen to give it a try but I don't really want to spend one month recovering XP.
Cheers,
Alex
PS: You may be wondering how I found out about your affairs with NTFS and Pavilion. I put "NTFS fips" on a Google box to try to solve my problem and clicked on a Slug mail thread you started months ago, entitled "NTFS without partition magic". I have now subscribed to the list. BTW, I couldn't have contacted you if you wouldn't have put your real email address next to your signature..
__________________________________________________________________
Vodafone te ofrece el primer servicio de mensajería instantánea con todo lo que hasta ahora te ofrecía un messenger clásico, ahora también desde tu móvil. Comunicate o haz nuevos amigos estés donde estés (Web, WAP o SMS), entra en Vodafone Messenger: http://www.vodafone.es/vodafonemessenger y envía ahora todos los SMS que quieras a tus amigos gratis desde la web.
-- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
-- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group - http://slug.org.au/ More Info: http://lists.slug.org.au/listinfo/slug
