[plug] Speaking of kernel panics... (win98 trashes extended partitions)

[Leon Brooks]

Dennis Plester wrote:

> Any ideas as to what might have happened? I've fallen back into my Windows
> mentality and reinstalled Mandrake, with ext2 partitions until I get my
> confidence back again. My system had run with ext2 for several months
> without hassle until this recent install. Just for the record, I also put my
> system through a RAM testing software suite that boots off a floppy, and it
> came up completely clean.

Windows 98, for reasons probably best left unexplored, fiddled with the 
partition table and trashed all of your extended partitions. AFAIK only 
Windows 98 does this. In order to make Windows permanently happy, you 
will need to:

   * make sure Windows is installed in the first primary partition

   * use the second and third primary partitions for something
     (e.g. /boot, /usr); you will need to use the ``Customized''
     installer mode (at least, maybe ``Expert'') to do this.

   * start making extended partitions after that (which will use
     the fourth primary to delineate the extended partitions area).

If you don't do this, Windows will from time to time trash your extended 
partitions. Oh, and every time you get a virus or trojan, it might trash 
*everything*. (-:

Running Win98 under Win4Lin improves your luck in this regard.