Hi Kevin, This will be familiar to you. I'm trying to switch my HP Pavilion from Win XP only to XP + Linux. Much like you, I would like to have HP's recovery XP since I don't want to re-install 1000 drivers that are working fine now, I don't even have a detailed hardware list of my system, and I don't care! :-)
I read that you were trying the same thing and I was wondering if you succeed. Also, I think there's one thing you didn't try (or didn't write about) and may work: 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. 3. Remove any hardware you may have added to your system, then recover by using either the CD set or the recovery partition. 4. Use fdisk again to create your fancy setup of data, swapping and other Linux partitions. 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 mensajer�a instant�nea con todo lo que hasta ahora te ofrec�a un messenger cl�sico, ahora tambi�n desde tu m�vil. Comunicate o haz nuevos amigos est�s donde est�s (Web, WAP o SMS), entra en Vodafone Messenger: http://www.vodafone.es/vodafonemessenger y env�a 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
