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cause it's so hard to do that

Thanks! I knew that it was a German site,but I haven't needed to use it in years. My customers actually prefer me NOT to add the Windows updates. Most are professionals,graphic artists,office workers,etc and I have found that Windows updates always seem to break something and it is a royal PITA to try to track down which of the 200+ updates is the one that broke the app they require to work. So now I use either Driveimage XML or Ranish Partition Manager depending on whether they have a spare drive for the clone process or not,and simply restore from image if something goes wrong.

I wasn't able to find the English version anywhere on site,but I did manage to run it through Google Translate and the link for that is here. So for anyone requiring Windows updates I would suggest using the batch file to make a slipstreamed ISO so the next time Windows bones you won't need as many patches. But as always this is my 02c,YMMV

I like sticking a 100MB boot partition at the front. Ranish Partition Manager is a really nice one. It is particularly nice if you want to have multi-Windows OS's on the same machine.

Still, that is a nice synopsis.

Actually, the source code can be found at http://www.ranish.com/part/xosl.htm.

Easy solution: ZipSlack.

No spyware, no ads, no bloat, no speed issues, no need for Windows to be running, no need for partitioning... (you have to run Windows 9x but probably better anyway, XP is bloated ;-)

Seriously, though, I'd have to list Ranish Partition Manager in this category. And I second the nomination for PuTTY (I actually set up a shortcut, puttyssh.cjb.net, I use it so often - you can actually run it straight from the Web btw) if it hasn't already been seconded.

And don't forget ReactOS - screw Windows, run everything on ReactOS!! ^_^

Pfft. These things are not important. The ideal setup would go "hey, I found a boot block and active partition already here! Oh teh nos! Another OS in a different partition! Better add that to my bootloader list before I wipe the original bootloader into hell!".

Another great idea would be to make LILO stop saying "LI" and locking up your machine if you ever choose to delete a Linux partition some time in the distant future.

Bootloaders are the most annoying thing to configure and Windows just does this automatically. OK, so it puts a bootloader that just boots windows on there, a minimal one, so what? All I want from a bootloader is for it to boot my damn OS, I certainly don't want it to be several hundred K big and support stupid options I'm never going to use. Just boot the damn thing, cheers. Take lessons from Ranish. That's quality shit there.

Or use Ranish Partition Manager. Boots from a floppy and can do what dd does plus much more...

I've been using it for years.

"So use FDISK. It's still free if you own Windows."

No, don't use FDISK. There are too many bugs, particularly when you're handling logical drives in extended partitions of and the last partition is of a type that it does not recognise (i.e. linux partitions.)

FDISK has 'accidentally' destroyed partitions of my own data due to this bug. Instead, I suggest you check out the excellent and GPL partition manager called ranish partition manager which does a much better job than microsoft's FDISK.

But FAT32 is becoming less and less useful compared to NTFS. I don't even need it anymore on my win32/linux machine because Mandrake 9.1 reads the NTFS partitions right out of the box. No configuration was needed.

IMO the last remaining legitimate use of fat32 is on mobile drives that you have to use in a variety of machines. My iBook won't read the NTFS and the Win2k won't read the OS X file system. Gotta use FAT32.

The ultimate cooling solution for your hardware is already standardized: the BeerBox. Read the report on this contraversial issue. RFCs, benchmarks, pictures :) http://www.ranish.com/beerbox/

FreeDOS has its own FDISK, and there's R. Nordier's FORMAT (sometimes works better than FD FORMAT) on the site too. Keep a boot disk with kernel.sys, command.com, fdisk.exe, fd*.ini, format.com and possibly a copy of Ranish Partition Manager (you'll possibly need cwsdpmi too), and you'll be God. Trust me, it's been a lifesaver for me more than once.

-uso.

• A Win98 Boot Disk with
• CD of Windows 98SE
• Burned CD with Win98SE service packs/patches
• AVG Free Anti Virus (Free - as good as Norton IMHO)
• Winrar (Shareware - handles most archive formats)
• Ranish Partition Manager (Free - runs from bootable floppy)
• Pc Inspector File Recovery software (Free)
• Spybot search & destroy (Free - removes spy ware / Trojans ,ect)
• SpywareBlaster (Free - prevents most spyware, trojan, and "browser help objects(I.E. Gator and Lop.com) from ever being installed in the first place)

• Drivers: Via, nVidia, and Intel chipsets; ATI Rage 128, ATI Radeon, and nVidia GPUs; Highpoint HPT37x and Promise Ultra IDE controllers; miscellaneous 3Com, AMD, Intel, Linksys, and NetGear NICs; Sound Blaster PCI, Sound Blaster Live, Santa Cruz, and Via integrated sound cards; DirectX; Palm Desktop; Nero UDF reader
• Applications: Mozilla, CDex, OpenOffice.org, Pixia*, SmartFTP
• Plugins and viewers: Adobe Acrobat Reader, Flash Player, Ghostscript and GSView, IrfanView, Java Runtime Environment, QuickTime, Winamp
• Emergency rescue stuff: Norton Disk Editor, Diskman, DOSLFN, MBRWork, Norton Disk Doctor, RegEdit, CTMOUSE, FIPS, Ghost, NTFSDOS, Partition Manager, Partition Resizer, RawWrite plus a DOS boot disk image, Info-Zip UNZIP, Restoration
• Miscellanous utilities: Ad-Aware, UnxUtils, wget, PGP, Privoxy, Restoration, TweakUI, TweakUI XP, VDMSound, XVI32

* I'd like to include The Gimp, but I often install the free/Free stuff from this CD onto computers I give to charity, where people might take offense to the name. I'll probably replace Pixia with CinePaint in the future.

This is close.

I think that this GPT crap is more MS monopolizing evilness. I use a program called Ranish Partition Manager to partition my drives. Using its special IPL it can create as many partitions as you want on a single drive (actually up to 99 i think but what kind of user needs that many?!?) They all appear as primary partitions if you go to FDISK and I've had no problems with it so far on my drive.