[plug] dual boot - Windows reinstall

[Richard Meyer]

----- Forwarded by Richard Meyer/Australia/Contr/IBM on 28/02/2003 07:37 AM
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                      clare at cyllene.uwa                                                                                             
                      .edu.au                  To:       plug at plug.linux.org.au                                                     
                                               cc:                                                                                  
                      27/02/2003 03:11         Subject:  Re: [plug] dual boot - Windows reinstall                                   
                      PM                                                                                                            
                      Please respond to                                                                                             
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On Thu, 27 Feb 2003, Cameron Patrick wrote:
  On Thu, Feb 27, 2003 at 11:06:13AM +0800, Leon Brooks wrote:
>> | If there's nothing you treasure on there, safest approach is to
install
>> | Windows first, then (re)install Linux, FreeBSD, whatever afterwards.
>>
>> Yes.  I'm not sure whether all versions of Windows allow you to choose
the
>> size of the partitions it creates, though... urgh.
>>

>I doubt if any does. After getting windows on, and degfragged if it has
>been there any length of time, you then shorten the Windows partition and
>that makes room for your linux.

The Win 98 SE I've got would honour partitions that already existed. There
was no way to tell it to only use a portion of the disk, but if you booted
up a Linux install first and did an <alt>-F2 to get a console and manually
ran fdisk and made the first partition a Win partition, it'd only install
there.

The biggest pain I had was when reinstalling to a machine with 2 HHD's
where the second one had a Win partition in a primary partition as D:.
After the first reboot, it insisted that I mount the Windows CD on drive
D:, and no power on earth could change its mind. A quick change to the Bios
telling it that there was no second drive fixed that.

RichardM

<<snipped>>
However in addition to shortening the partition, the FAT tables have to
be edited to match, as Windows will regard those as more useful than the
actual partitions I believe (and plough through your new partitions
regardless.)

I have been told that Partition Magic can do this (early version I had
would not). But fips20 which comes a part of Debian and probably others
does it very well. Fips20 was even able to slot partitions in between the
shortened windows and a Hibernate which I didn't want to alter.
It is near the top of the Debian mirror,
mirrors/linux/debian/tools

clare