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

[Dennis Plester]

Leon,

Thanks for the advice. I'll check out my primary vs extended partition
arrangement. I re-installed under Expert mode because I like to answer
questions :-) but I suspect Mandrake defaulted to extended partitions.

I did have Windows in my first partition. As I wrote in response to Mike's
suggestions, I haven't run Windows for 2 weeks, so could it be held
responsible if it hasn't even run? Pretty powerful stuff ;-). 

Hang on a minute... My 2.5 year old daughter may have been playing with her
Toddler town CD's again. I'll check with the wife...

Is Windows ME any better with this kind of thing than 98, or it just the
same wolf in sheep's clothing!

As for Win4Lin. I already run what I can't live without under Vmware (very
little), and have no problems, but no matter what, I still can't play all
the games I enjoy from time to time so I can't ditch the Windows partition
yet? God bless Loki, but we need a few more quality game ports over to
Linux! 

Thanks again

Dennis.

Leon wrote:


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.