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How To Make Dual Booting A (Bigger) Pain
the_phenom writes "Thinking of dual-booting your Windoze XP 17" Toshiba P25 laptop? Think again - this one 'uses a DVD with an already setup version of Windows XP Home and then transfers it to the notebook's hard drive,' preventing the normal setup procedure and thus, dual-booting." This reminds me of the unfriendly practice on some PC builders' parts of including an OS "backup" only on a hard-drive partition.
They also included the Windows drivers for the hardware there, too. I had to wipe the drive and do a Ghost image install of Win2k, and only after I'd wiped both(?!) partitions on the drive did it occur to me that I needed one of them to get all the hardware working. I eventually got an ethernet driver re-assembled from floppies and got on the internet to download the rest. That's 2 hours of my life I'll never get back. . .
You are not the customer.
when looking for a laptop, anyways.
but can't you install linux after windows is already installed? like... use partition magic or something to resize and create a new partition and install linux on that? i havn't done this, but I'm surprised it would really be a problem.
He'd backup his linux-install somewhere, install from the DVD, and then re-install linux afterwards?
First it sounded like the DVD was necessary on every boot, but that's not makes very little sense (it'll overwrite updates, patches, servicepacks?!). Okay, so you can't easily make it install into something other than the whole disk? That's bad, but you can deal with it. No?
I suspect a language-barrier problem is the root of this article/misunderstanding.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Yet one more reason I'm going to buy an Apple laptop (someday).
Doing it that way is great for normal people that don't know alot about computers. It's a real PAIN for people who do. :(
Since when are Windows CDs a requirement for dual booting? I've installed a dual boot solution just fine WITHOUT any Windows CDs. That's on 98se, 2k and XP Pro. Worked like a dream and I simply did NOT need the CD, nor can I think of any situation where I WOULD need the CD. (then again, it's 5 am in the morning, I think I can barely be qualified as sentient atm)
So to put it in a simple way:
What's the fecking problem!?
Hate me!
How is this news? Tosh and other vendors have been selling PCs with only a "recovery CD" that wipes everything for years.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
To install a copy of XP on the hard drive for real? Or does MS prohibit that?
Im sure M$ likes this. First of all (main reason), they probably save a butt-load of money on tech support when n00bs who haven't RTFM mess up installation somehow(It's Windows for christ's sake! Not (Inset Linux Distro Here)!). Lastly, it is a strong discouragement to people who foolishly think that they OWN their computers and software. I mean, who needs a brain now? The computer will do all of our thinking from now on.
One of my HP machines had a similar setup where Windows 98 (one of my older machines) was distributed as an image on 2 "HP Recovery CDs".
To install Linux on these boxes, I simply resized the Windows 98 partition down to 2 GB and used the other 16GB of freespace to install Linux.
"I filter at +6, and have yet to miss out on an important comment." (#822545)
How is this any different from the "system recovery" disks that have been shipping with laptops for years. I can't remember when I last bought a laptop that came with just a plain OS install disk.
What's to prevent you from installing XP once, using something like Partition Magic to resize the partitions, and then installing Linux or whatever? Seems to me the only evil thing about this is that reinstalling XP might be a pain?
Use Partition Magic to shrink the XP partition and create space for a Linux partition. How is this any different than thousands of other computer systems out there that come with a rescue disk to rebuild the system to the factory installed image? Yes, for the 1% of users that want to dual boot it will be a minor pain. For the other 99% of the users a rescue image like that is a godsend and saves support costs for the company. If the computer is completely hosed, stick the DVD in and reformat/reload. No need to pay a computer geek to work his magic on your broken Windows box.
If you've got a floppy, or any sort of bootable removable media whatsoever, dual-booting into Linux is possible.
Whats so hard about putting a floppy in this dreaded oh-so-evil laptop, and leaving it there? I mean, how often do *you* use floppies anymore?
Pointless article.
Bowie J. Poag
Fork out $70 for PartitionMagic, which can handle NTFS (which I assume is the default file system there). But hey, it's less than XP!
Can't the guy just buy a Partition Magic Pro and resize his ntfs partition to something smaller, then install linux over this ? Or am I missing something ?
If it's a regular Windows installation on an NTFS disk you can still install Linux by resizing. You can use either Partition Magick or the first disk of the Mandrake 9.1 set to resize the NTFS disk. Make sure to defrag the NTFS partition from within Windows first before doing this procedure or else the contents will be destroyed.
The problem seems to be that the image is the size of the disk so reinstallation of Windows, once Linux is already installed, will overwrite all partitions. It's just a complete disk image on the DVD. One workaround is to do the Windows installation, install Linux, use something like g4u to create a copy of your disk.
Or, use dd from the Linux partition to copy the Windows image once it's all installed.
How did this get approved as an article, slow night?
I worked at one of the big 3 oems and it's just basically an image. Toshiba used Ghost, IBM used PowerQuest Drive Image, etc....
Once the OS is installed, use Partition Magic and then install your other OS of choice.
If you know enough to dual boot, you could also use the included recovery CD, make YOUR OWN image of the recovered hard disc, and then do what you want to that image in conjunction with other images.
No one lied to you, did you think of asking?
how about you resize your damn partition and quit whining. Even Macs come with Software REstore disks so eh shuitpupupadf
Almost every laptop sold nowadays only come with restore cds, they never EVER come with a full copy of windows. HECK nowadays HP and Compaqs just have a partition called RESTORE PARTITION, and thats the only way to restore them because they come with NO DISKS! You have to contact HP or COMPAQ to request them for a small fee. And even then, they are only restore cds. Basicly your just paying for a licence. Which means legally you can go to Kazaa and download a Win2k ISO and just use the licence you payed for. Simple....
keanmarine.com
Go buy a copy of Partition Magic. Resize the C drive down, then install Linux. How easy could this get?
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
Am I the only person who uses it? Just shrink the partition after the fresh install of XP and put whatever you want on the new partition.
dual boot setup does not require winxp installation cdroms. gnu parted or partition magic will suffice to resize the partitions.
Do not use the enclosed DVD, use an off the shelf version of Windows, if you so desire, I would be hella pissed though. I am sure you do not need to use the DVD exclusively. They at least need to disclose what they are doing in plain language, shame shame on Toshiba, I used to think their laptops were keen.
I hate sigs.
Partition Magic costs money?
Dual booting without any cooperation from the windows end is easy:
1. Partition using linux installer, creating a partition for XP. Quit the installer.
2. Install Windows, which will only see the C:\ partition you left it. This will also install onto the MBR, but that's ok.
3. Install Linux. Grub or whatever will now be on the MBR, and everything is peachy.
Unless there is some secret low level HD work going on, I don't get it.
It isn't that hard. I had to do this with my Dell. Most systems now come with "image restore" disks instead of installation disks for software piracry reasons.
Now, to dual-boot all you have to do is:
1) resize your windows partition using any available tool (I purchased partition magic).
2) Install linux in the newly created free space.
3) Put the bootloader (I'm partial to Grub now) into the MBR.
And you're off to the races!
Of course, this means that if your windows partition goes south you have to backup your linux partition and start from scratch, but that's the risk you take.
It doesn't stop you from installing linux, it doesn't stop you from dual-booting. It is simply a quick and easy way to install windows for a fixed hardware platform.
Jason Pollock
In layman's terms, this is saying that there is no Windows setup program, just a pre-set hard drive image included.
/. implying that right now, I can run Windows setup from my computer and re-install Windows onto that same hard drive all over again (instead of just having backups.)??
Now, the slashdot story alludes to the fact that most PC's don't come with a Windows disk anymore, but just Windows setup on the hard drive.
My question to the readers with more insight than me on this is, HOW IS THE SECOND PARAGRAPH ANY DIFFERENT FROM THE FIRST? Why does it say it is a bigger booting pain? Isn't it exactly the same shit that's been going on? Is
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Maybe I'm wrong, but this seems like a non-story to me. First, the linked article says nothing truly interesting, and second, Toshiba is well within their rights to make it difficult for you to dual-boot.
Yes, it's a pain in the ass when they work against you, but there are other laptop manufacturers who claim to support Linux *coughIBMcough*, so vote with your feet, and buy toe-pens... I mean, buy from people who don't work against you.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
here...r esize.htm l
http://mlf.linux.rulez.org/mlf/ezaz/ntfs
Now we just have to pour some resource into it.
Actually, the HPaq EVO D510's we've got at work came with a recovery CD that you're supposed to start with and a WinXP Pro CD that you put in during the recovery. If you just put in the XP CD, it boots and installs normally. I'm not sure if it actually works, because there is no key on the CD case, but I have been able to get as far as the point where it asks for the key. I suppose the recovery CD handles that part. If you could find out what the key is that they're using (I doubt it's the FCKGW one), you might be able to install XP clean.
;-).
Or, as clean as is possible
Anyway, maybe it's possible to just put in the OS CD, if you get that option with other vendors.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Windoze
It's the 1997 AOL Progz scene all over again!!
Most laptops, and most "end-user" systems (aka the ones that are built by Dell, IBM, etc.) don't include a real version of Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP, but in fact are just a hard drive image of the OS, and if you want to reinstall it has to wipe out the whole HD and start over.
This has been happening since 1997, and is probably not really worthy of an article. If you want a computer that doesn't have this, don't buy one from one of the "big names".
Free means no restrictions, ironic the FSF's GPL forces restrictions, isn't it? What's your definition of free?
Why not just borrow a full install disk of XP from a friend? Surely this is a good example of fair use, considering you already own a license to the operating system, albeit a different copy.
[ home ]
The toshiba restore disks completely overwrite the drive, no
method of saving data. I called toshiba tech support to see if there was anyway of getting around this.
Tech Support: "We don't support customization of our computers"
Me: "There was no customization, the only thing that was done was the creation of a few word files and email that was downloaded"
Tech Support: "Your data is customization of the machine"
I used to love toshiba laptops, but I swore off buying them forever this incident.
A friend of mine was starting up a new company. He purchased a new toshiba laptop. Two days before a large proposal was due (3 day's after getting the new laptop), his laptop starting failing. On the laptop were are the vendor quotes and his proposal. The machine was unusable. No way to transfer the data through a network/backup on cd/etc.
He brought the machine to me. Knoppix failed. I was able to get a windows boot disk to get into commandline recovery mode, copy the files one by one onto a pcmcia hd I happened to have. Saved the data.
What is new about this? I thought Microsoft long ago told the OEMs that they could no longer include full-blown Windows CDs with the computer. Instead, OEMs could only include a "restoration" CD that restored the computer to its original configuration. In fact, I think /. had an article about it when it 1st happened.
I cannot find it in the /. archives, but here is an InfoWorld column about it.
Dual boot works just fine. I can boot either QNX or Linux.
Why don't you get on IRC and download an ISO of Windows XP and install from that? It's not 100% legal, but you do have a license for Windows XP. Sometimes the ends justify the means.
As others have stated, this is a non-issue.
My Compaq Presario 2715US came with Windows XP on a series of three CD's that will wipe everything before putting them back on. As far as I know, this is fairly common practice nowadays. The twist here is that all of the Microsoft applications (XP and Works) and the drivers are within the image, all of the other apps that came with it (WinDVD, Symantec Anti-Virus, etc.) are included on their own CD's.
It's easy to make a dual-boot. Resize the NTFS partition, and then install Linux into the empty space. GRUB or LILO will then install into the MBR, and presto, dual-boot!
The thing that I hate about XP versus Windows 2000 (and earlier, I believe) is that XP seems to deliberately clobber the MBR. For example, if I install Linux (and GRUB or LILO), then install XP afterwards, GRUB/LILO is gone, I have to use a boot-disk to get back into Linux. This pisses me off to no end.
As for those images... If you get Windows 2000 or Windows XP images, you've almost got a full-bootable copy. The image for my laptop was made with (I think) DriveImage, and I was able to get an evaulation copy of it, and it allowed me to extract the i386 (CABs) directory. From there, I just had to borrow a few files (like setup.exe, etc.) from a friends' XP installation CD (which indicently came with a Dell laptop he bought), and make it bootable according to Bink's pageOf course, not knowing fully about how Windows XP's activation works, I didn't want to just make a copy of his XP install CD, in case it was keyed for a Dell laptop. And, just in case, it somehow cut him off. :)
-- Joe
Recently I saw an article on MS's web site that most system problems were caused by people installing WindowsXP by themselves, and that users should hire a tech professional instead. I suspect they do this just to try to close off the white-box market.
Bought an Averatec 3120 at Bestbuy and wanted a dual boot Linux/XP.
The "recovery CD" (more like destruction CD) came with a pre-installed XP and it would re-format the drive automatically. I could see the ghost image but I couldn't use it because it was locked with a password. What I did is booted with the CD and pressed F8 and then loaded in step by step mode but I skipped the last command, which was launching the mambo-hombo mayhem. The script was actually calling an oem ghost using a password.
I wrote down the password and created my partitions with FDISK. Then I used the oem ghost and wrote XP on the 1st partition.
Everything went fine and then I rebooted with RH9 and installed it on the 2nd partition. Everything works fine except for the PCMCIA (btw, is anyone has a fix, let me know - my wireless card doesn't work).
Recovery CD's suck. I wish they would give real CD's like in the windows 98 period.
-- Leeeter than leet
I can't see why people cannot buy Partition Magic, re-partition the harddrive and install Linux. No big deal, really!
============
Mathematics will always come back to hunt you down, in so many ways
Yeah, I have two HPs that came with XP on "recovery disks"... guess what, I fired up Kazaa, downloaded XP, formatted both of them. Charge me for Windows and not give it to me will you? Fuckers. I paid for two copies of XP, and I am using two copies of XP.
I am posting Anon for obvious reasons...
If posting the article didn't have a point, it wouldn't have a Microsoft/Borg icon next to it. :)
/.
Note to the editor: Unless you prove otherwise, just because computer dealers do something, doesn't mean MS told them to do it. I know, this goes in the "duh" category, but heh, this is
From the article I've basically gathered that some one who has no idea how to resize a partition on a hard drive is screaming bloody murder because thse Toshiba laptops do the equivilant od dd'ing a hard drive image back to disk. Personally, I prefer this to the isntallation cd, but that's just me.
While I'm no fan of Mandrake Linux, their Disk Drake software is good stuff, fully capable of resizing an ntfs partition without loosing data. If you're looking for a commercial tool, Partition Magic can do the same thing.
This isn't a case of a laptop manufacturer including a different installation medium to screw linux, it's a case of such a manufacturer including a disk that you can stick in the DVD-ROM, click OK to, and leave for an unattended re-installation of Windows XP. Big fsckin' deal.
Slackware, what else when it must be secure, stable, and easy?
This fellow can just use a friends regular OEM XP CD and his product key and be perfectly legal. He just has to give his friend the CD back.
Tis better to be silent and thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt --Abraham Lincoln
Uh.. just install and then resize/reparition the drive. If it will allow to use FAT do that as there are freeware apps that will resize for you. If it forces you to use NTFS then youll have to buy something like partition magic that can handle NTFS volumes. This really isnt a huge deal infact it might only be a problem if you need to 'reinstall' windows as then it will most likly wipe your linux partitions. Of course if you made backups it should be cool.
Why do people think this is some sneaky move, and look at MS. It's simple WinXP pro, for example, is 1.6gig installed, thats almost a gig bigger then a normal disk. So install takes a long time as it resets everything up. Having it on a dvd not compressed and allready set up makes perfect sense. It's for a laptop, very static hardware. For a regular user being able to put a disk in and it copys everything over and your good to go is a great thing. I also bet this was more of toshiba idea then MS's. They arn't building these things with the intent of dual boot, just doesn't make sense to worry about something 0.01% of those who buy one will do. Why not make it nicer for the 99.99 percent that will use it like normal.
Also to other, I don't think any PC maker has included a straight off the shelf version of windows in nearly a decade. No computer I have bought or seen bought by someone had a true real version of windows with it. When you buy a computer from any OEM it comes with a quasi version of windows. This is no differant. Except if the HD crahses of have to re-install you can now do it in a few minutes instead of over an hour.
Get a copy of the WinXP Home install CD, then install using the key you got with the laptop, and then give the customer a copy of the install CD. Microsoft might not like it but you are using the key you got with the Laptop and you are using their(ughh) product. Yes, I do know that the average John Doe consumer won't know how to do this that's why there are techs around like Me that will do it for a nominal fee.
Silly... how the heck did this get slashdotted!... geez...
What a pile of crap... how does a DVD drive have anything to do with the boot block? Am I to understand that you have to have some DVD in your system every time you want to boot up? NO! I don't think so. That is a total joke. I don't believe it. Utter crap. Go to college and learn how a computer works!
Gee - great.
What could of been a nice article ruined by someone Having to slam "windoze".
Whatever happened to providing commentary and articles on their merits? Can't someone post a news story without spinning it to the left or right?
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
If you really, really want to run Windows and Linux on your new laptop, just tack on the cash for actual XP disks. I mean, you just bought a new laptop. It's not that much more, assuming Windows XP is essential to what you have to do. And don't wince at "paying twice" for Windows XP, Microsoft basically gives away its OS to dealers.
That said, nobody buy Toshiba laptops.
...
That's one underpowered Pentium.
This is as good a reason to download or copy your current Windows version as I have ever heard.
HP does it too.
The only bad thing I see in that is that serial on the back of notebook doesn't work with common install CD.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
When it's something that's more convenient for 99% of your customers it's not unfriendly. Don't break out your foil hats yet...it's not malice...
My IBM Thinkpad T20 runs Redhat 9.0. And I watch DVD's on it. Sure to piss off MS and the MPAA.
Corporatism != Free Market
I use this old method and I am by no means a linux expert.
N T="Microso ft Windows 2000 Professional" /fastdetect
1: change lilo or your grub to use your linux boot partion...
2: run lilo or grub
3: dd if=/dev/hda? count=1 bs=512 of=/mnt/win_c/linux.bin
and change NT/2K/XP boot.ini to look something like this
[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=linux
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WIN
c:\linux.bin=linux
Ive used that since NT 4.0 for my dual boot systems. Its a bit of pain to use NTs boot loader instead of what linux distros provide but it gets the job done.
First, the register is stupid. It should not be used as a source for information, if you have any aspirations of having reliable information.
Second, MS has been encouraging hardware vendors to provide 'recovery media' rather than 'installation media' for years. This is in response to the widespread practice of people sharing/using their OEM media on other computers. But with Windows Product Activation, it shouldn't be neccessary.
Third, some vendors (IBM) provide downloads for all their drivers from their website, so if you do want to install Windows you can. Others (HP) provide the drivers only on the hard drive shipped with the machine, and only put updates on their website.
Fourth, the easiest way to dual boot linux and your windows PC is to buy Partition Magic, have it carve out space for Linux leaving your OS preload in place. Move on...
The only Windows XP I know about is the "Devilsown" edition. Is this "home" thing some new release I need to get from IRC?
The new 17" Toshiba comes with a Windows DVD that basically mirror copies itself onto the hard drive (ghosting). Their is no interaction with the user so he can't specify partitions and the like. So he can't dual boot because all the partition is occupied by Windows and can't be changed (to his viewpoint). He can't format the HD and install Linux first because the Windows DVD will simply wipe out the HD and install Windows. Perhaps the author is doing it the only way he knows.
As others pointed out, Partition Magic will allow him to change the partition and allow him to install a second OS. I would think that the author should have asked for some help before writing the article. I've never bought a system with a recovery disk, but then again the last system I bought and did not build was years ago. It's understandable about his frustration if he didn't know any better.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
"...he'll have to fork out for a fresh set of Windows XP disks if he wants to perform the dual boot miracle"
Well, it looks like SCO will have to get in line to charge for Linux, in the mean time it looks like Microsoft has found a way.
I have a Toshiba laptop with the same recovery disks (3 CD's instead of the DVD, but the same concept).
It was a bit of a pain at first, as I did have to buy System Commander (which is very cool as a boot-loader and as a utility) to get around this. Since the install image is NTFS you'll need Partition magic 7 or 8 or SC7. Not sure if there is a freeware utility to munge NTFS partitions.
Once up and running, I took a snapshot of the resized XP partition and now I don't need the recovery disks. It is nice though that Toshiba installs all of the drivers for you, and that the system works out of the box after re-imaging.
As for running another O/S on this laptop, Linux and Solaris are VERY well supported, so I don't think I'd give up this laptop just cause of this slight inconvenience. The laptop is a 1415-S173 Celeron 1.8GHz which has a beautiful screen and was $850.00 new with rebate and 512MB. In short, it kicks price/performance ass.
Contrary to popular belief, life is not a bitch. It is far far worse.
knoppix has qtparted on it. No need to buy Partition Magic. Just get a knoppix CD and run qtparted.
see http://qtparted.sourceforge.net/
http://tinyurl.com/4ny52
Perhaps I'm just being naïve, but you don't need to use their install/recovery disks. Purchase of the machine included a license to run one version of windows XP (or whatever version we are talking about). So in this case, just find someone else with the same version, who has the real install media, and you should be all set. Your license should work on the machine no matter how it was installed.
There is nothing stopping you from using a different bootloader. What the article is talking about is that there is no windows install disk. Only an image, like one you would make with "ghost".
----
All of whose base are belong to the what-now?
Including CDs with the notebook adds about a week more lead time since they need to be pressed and packaged with the rest of the notebook. This matters when the retail shelf life of a notebook model is about 3 months. Now, multiply by multiple models and variations, and take into account the added supply chain requirements, and it could easily be cheaper to one-off CDs on demand, which could include updated drivers, etc.
-M5B
Toshiba has been doing this since the 90's
although resizing the partition will work, another method would be to try and run the DVD from inside VMware Workstation or Bochs. run the hard-drive-contents-dumping proggy from the DVD and make a vmware image. from that point it depends how you handle this because i've never done it myself, but the VMware docs say you can actually boot a VMware image from an actual computer.
it may be that you need to use the "physical disk" installation method for this, would defeat the purpose. but if you can boot an image without vmware, that might be an alternative.
I don't think it would be that hard to just pick up a copy of Norton Ghost and transfer the image to another system, then use Linux to make new FAT32 partitions and dump the image back to those. Finally, set up grub to boot to the partition that houses Windows XP Home.
Un-news
Hmmm... if dual-booting is a pain, that forces you to make an OS choice. I know which one most slashdotters would take...
dd + gzip, send result to large removable or networked drive.
When you live in a sick society, just about everything you do is wrong.
...most true gamers own consoles now. The PC gaming market is shrinking.
Hell, even Microsoft, the maker of this Windows gaming platform, agrees!
I don't dual boot you insensitive clod.
/etc/slackware-version
sinserve@shivery ~% uname -a
Linux shivery 2.4.18 #2 Wed Jul 2 05:42:33 EDT 2003 i686 unknown
sinserve@shivery ~% cat
Slackware 8.1
sinserve@shivery ~%
Microsnot, or the computer manufacturer respectively, requires that you install the provided version of WindowsXX. Which means, you can only install WindowsXX as provided from the OEM. In rare cases, the version is just different enough. YOu cannot install a COTS copy of XP if your machine came with a Toshiba OEM copy of XP.
One more reason to say "Fuck Microsoft", and use Linux. Someday, I myself might actually do that, but I'm doing well enough with pirated microsoft software (Just kidding, don't sue my ass).
I can't think of a single machine I've purchased in the last ten years where I've "started' with the load of crap that the manufacturer tries to foist on me. Even if running windows, the very first thing I do is boot from a clean install CD, delete EVERYTHING from the hard drive, and install from scratch.
Sure, I'm missing out on the 100-odd garbage programs, screen savers, backgrounds, and junk that the mfgr has cluttered up the distro with, but that's the whole point.
I've never seen a machine that won't install from a boxed copy of XP/2000/NT, etc.
The solution is simple: just install your favorite Linux distribution and don't install Windows.
Sheesh. The answer was right in front of you.
[Flamebait +1]
Ruby on Rails Screencast
here's a few options 1. Don't buy that lappy 2. Partition Magic 3. Buy a copy of XP media on CD from M$, explain that you already have a license and just need the media. (good luck, but it can be done)
...no, but if it's worth it if you want to actually have linux reside on the same disk as Windows.
I'm sure there's a disk utility out there that will resize a partion for you that is free.
... although PM's price is kinda low compared to your laptop, you can still use google to find many free programs which will allow you to resize it for free
However, I'm pretty sure that the image is a ghost image and you may be able to work on it to fit it on a previously partitionned HD
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
This is another great excuse not to add a Winders partition on my laptop! Thanks, Bill!
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
About a year ago I purchased a Toshiba Satellite 1900 laptop. It came with two recovery CD's, in which you put the CD in the drive, reboot, and it tells you it will wipe everything, press okay to continue... yadda yadda yadda... With that one, if you partition your hard drives, etc it does not touch the partition table, it simply formats the primary partition (if its FAT32 or NTFS). I never did try making the first partition EXT2 or EXT3, but I'll assume it wouldn't know what to do in that case. The fact of the matter is you don't need the real windows CDs nor have you ever needed them. I had absolutely no problem getting linux on that thing and dual botting it with WindozeXP. The only thing I had a hitch with was my Cisco Aironet 350 PCMCIA card... which was actually easy to fix.
I read this article yesterday. I promptly emailed the editor. Here is a copy of my email.
r esize. html
To Whom it May Concern:
I have recently read an article on your website claiming there is no way
to set up a dual-boot system on the new toshiba laptop. This is not true.
There are now non-destructive ntfs filesystem resizing tools for linux.
I personally used a live-CD to resize my windows partition before installing
debian. I know that Mandrake comes with the tools by default and has the
option for resizing windows partitions (NTFS) from the installer.
here is a link to the FAQ:
http://linux-ntfs.sourceforge.net/info/ntfs
I hope you can attach an editor's note so future readers will not be
misled by this article.
thank you,
david tansey
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
If you think dual booting is a pain with todays software, you obviously didn't deal with it a few years ago when the software was crap. I mean, come on, redhat does all the work for you. even a macos user could figure it out.
Use lilo to write a boot sector to whatever device you're using it on, dd it to a file, slap that file in C:\ then edit boot.ini.
A good workaround is to install Linux then VmWare Workstation then install the windows dvd onto it. I have no way to verify that it'll work but I suspect it will.
It is not uncommon to have to reload a version of Windows to fix a problem, recover from a bad driver choice, 'clean' the PC before sale, or just to go back to the basics after a year of bloating the machine with random software.
As I understand the article, the question is thus - what happens when I need to reload Windows on the machine, and another OS is also present, in a dual-boot scenario? It seems that the manufacturer's discs assume that it is Ok to completely wipe my hard drive, to put the machine back to the state that it was originally shipped in.
Whether or not this is a "good thing" is surely a matter of opinion, but it does limit my options as a user much more than they would be if they had shipped an OEM OS disc.
People have mentioned using utils such as Partition Magic and other OSS tools to resize a partition and install. This seems to assume that the user either planned ahead and got that software ahead of time, or has another machine on segment from which to do it.
The article seemed juvenile and more "oh no evil MS plot to kill linux", when in reality, I think we are simply trading the additional options available with an OEM CD for the relatively easy option of restoring the PC back to the manufacturer's original state (perhaps before sale, or such).
The most interesting point in most of the discussion was - if I buy this machine, can I then legally snag an ISO of the OS, and use it as my license? If so, how would you retrive the CD-Key used to register it?
...they both begin with "G." And as for VPC..yeah, it runs games great. And native support for games on Mac sucks. And I like macs.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
... You're also off base.
.01% of people run Linux, BSD, or another operating system. Do the math, dude.
Vastly more than
Let me spell it out for you:
You claim that (.01% x users) run linux. So, in your world, for every 100,000 PCs sold, only one uses linux.
You are full of shit. You are dead wrong. come back with other agruments, if you like, but you're a troll. Look at Netcraft if you like, look at desktopwatch, I don't care. Honestly, take your pick, you are incorrect.
I know I'm responding to a troll, but, well, damn.
I forget what 8 was for.
Back in the day, my girlfriend at the time wanted to try Linux. Installig a second hard drive her laptop wasn't an option. Rather than repartioning the entire hard drive, I simply burned the "system restore partition" on to a CD, deleted it, and installed Linux there.
The entire process took about 2 hours and didn't require us to purchase software (important for college kids).
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Here's some stuff you wouldn't realize until you made the mistake of buying one.
1.) Toshiba's now come with a "BIOS-less" system which means that windows controls all the hardware and you can change NONE of the settings, which makes installing linux a real pain in the ass, but it is still possible.
2.) Toshiba's have a problem of having their own "helping" software that when you boot with a net connection it will call home and download "updates" automatically for you. One such update was for my model to cut the clock speed in half.
3.) Every toshiba I've owned has horrible battery life, you might as well consider them a computer with a built in UPS and easy to move around, and not a "portable laptop".
4.) Toshiba has a little problem with laptops overheating (hence the lawsuit) and certain parts melting.
5.) Toshiba's only selling point is their spec sheets, but as far as being a good purchase you're in for some real problems down the road, I have yet to meet someone who hasn't had some part of their toshiba fall apart and cost less than $100 to fix.
All-in-all these laptops aren't that great, while they pack the latest and greatest they aren't exactly stellar machines. Overheating and hardware failures are certainly nothing new to toshiba's and I would recommend everyone read reviews of ANY laptop model out there.
Remember while it may be cool to have a laptop usually there is something sub-par (make sure you check the waruntee by the manufacturer and highest screen resolution). And ALWAYS remember that if you have the opportunity to grab an extended or three year waruntee for less than $150 then go for it. The battery WILL die, you WILL lose a key on the keyboard, you WILL drop it at least once in 3 years, and something WILL die in it. These are not model specific by any means, these are general laptop things.
Hope this helped ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
In a similar vein, my Compaq Presario 3000 laptop apparently won't boot Linux at all.
I've tried the bootable CDs from 3 different distros, and each starts reading the CD as the first BIOS boot device, resets the machine, and repeats, ad infinitum.
I haven't spent a great deal of time trying to hunt down what the issue might be, as I decided to just install to a more Linux-friendly Vaio laptop of mine, and leave the Presario as XP, but if other people are having similar issues it might be interesting whether there's a recent general trend toward Linux-unfriendly hardware from certain manufacturers.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Then, make your own "installation" CD that creates the partitions this way and copies all the files into the correct place. If anything goes wrong later on, back up your data, stick in your bootable CD, bata-bing, bata-boom, and you've got it exactly the way you want again.
Save all your files in a specific place on your hard disk (your home directory on an operating system, or wherever it is that Windows has you save files if that's what you use), so that you can easily copy them over to a "server" once in a while, that server being some old box in your closet with a huge hard drive. You could back up any and all computers that you have on this hard drive, so that at any given time, you have two copies of your data. Segregating your data from that of programs and whatnot will also allow you to make new bootable installation disks every so often if you decide to install more programs on your hard disk, so that recovery places everything exactly the way you want it, and you only have to copy stuff back over from your "server" to complete the procedure.
Of course you can't reinstall Windows but seriously how often do you need to do that? We have moved on from Win98 now you know.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
retarded
Really, what's up with that? I think XP Home is made for people for whom this would be a total non-issue.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
No, Windows is not in the hardware as some posters think. Just imagine if it were. It would require several gigs of non-volatile memory just for the disk image; and how long would it take a BIOS to blit that to a drive? No no no. Use some common sense people.
;)
Instead, this is merely an FYI story about a person who bought a notebook, expecting to have a bona fide OEM cd to install XP home. Well, it's been years since MS has shipped OEM versions of their OS with major brand notebooks. Instead, it's the industry standard to get a system restore CD.
But here's a solution. You can install XP Home on that new notebook, and use fips (available here among other places), or Partition Magic if you want to pay money, to shrink the partition. You should then have enough space to install linux.
Alternatively You can just hit packetnews.org and search for a nice ISO of XP Home. Fire up your favorite xdcc-capable IRC client, and you're set. Download and install. It's not 100% legal, but WTF. You got shafted on the notebook sourceware, and by getting an ISO, MS is not losing a cent; they already got paid once for the non-working XP Home that can with the notebook. So fsck 'em. (Plus, if you're running linux instead of a *bsd, you're probably into 'pirating' ^H^H^H^H^H^H exercising your freedom anyway.)
After a few years of swapping MP3z, you'll eventually grow up and switch to a dangerously dedicated 'bsd notebook anyway.
I worked with HP/Compaq stuff for a while, and in this case, if you just use the win XP "system" cd without the recovery cd, it works but you end up with practically no drivers for the system (like display, sound, etc) and plus they somehow made it so that that XP cd wont work in a non HP machine either, so its not really a REAL win XP cd... quasi xp cd.
The best solution is simply not buy these retarded things in the first place. My computer is a toy to play around with, I don't want to have a laptop or whatever that is openly hostile to me modifing it by design.
Basicly these laptops are worthless and have many superior (due to user friendlyness if nothing else) products aviable.
If this was a accident of design it was a serious mistake and if it was design it shows the lack of respect toshiba has at it's user base, and that they are willing to put MS before it's own customers.
Dual-booting is always easier when Windows is installed first... Windows really dislikes being anywhere but on hda1, and it requires some bootloader trickery to get it to work when it isn't there. Not to mention the fact that Windows tends to overwrite your bootloader. However, wouldn't partitioning the hard drive make it harder for the restore DVD to work? I think the title should be: "Dual booting: How to make using a restore DVD a (bigger) pain"
If it weren't for fog, the world would run at a really crappy framerate.
why resize anything.....just borrow someones
2000 cd and blast that XP crap off...or
if you must....cant you just borrow some ones
XP cd and use your key?
A) Win XP Home is a crippled piece of shit that no one should be running anyway. Pick up a copy of XP Pro (minimum) somewhere, install CD. Borrow it from work, borrow it from a friend, get a friend to make you an ISO copy of his/her disk, pirate it from the web if'n you got no better options.
B) Make sure you have all the drivers you need. Video, Sound, Monitor, Motherboard, NIC, USB Hub, DVD code/player. XP will find and install most of these for you, but you want disks for anything that it won't find or where you have drivers that are newer and better than the supplied WHQL drivers.
C) Format Drives: Create an NTFS C: partition of 8-16 GB, and a VFAT D: Partition of 32 GB. Keep all your installation programs, data, mp3's etc, on the D: drive where you can access them with ease from Windows or Linux. This way if you need to blow away your Windows boot partition you've got all the tools to rebuild from D:
D) Install system. Look ma! No AOL icon, No MS (Doesn') Works, No pre-installed MusicMatch (which also sucks). In other words: none of that annoying garbage with which system vendors load up their PC's.
E) Now change the theme to Windows Classic or Windows XP (modified). Move the start bar to top for that "Apple" feel. The start menu makes a lot more graphical sense this way. Make the background "None" and set up the backgroud as Black or Some Other Dark color, so you don't burn out your eyes as quickly and waste resources with Internet support screen backgrounds. Kill all the menu transition effects and all the shadow effects, unless you goal is have a slower interface.
D) You have a minimal Win XP Pro setup! Install the programs *you* want. But run the annoying little auto-updater -- you *want* to know about bug patches asap.
This is the best way to get performance out of WinXP. And don't run a lot of stupid bloaty shit like Bonzai Buddy, or the Weather Tray Bar, or msmsgs.exe, etc.
You shouldn't be running system configurations as the vendor ships them. That's a crock. They're always buggy, because they load too much crap.
Divide up the rest of you Hard Drive into Partitions for Linux, you should probably have room enough for several variants if'n you want
DIY!
Is it illegal to download an XP Home ISO, if you own the license? I do not consider such rubbish. You have a license to use Windows, get the media in whatever way you like.
On my desktop box, when I reinstalled XP, reformatted both NTFS partitions, but left the ext3, FAT32 and swap the heck alone.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I recently got an NEC Versa from my insurance company to replace a stolen laptop after we got burgled. /mnt/win_d instead of /mnt/win_c because I thought d: would be the data partition and c: would be the boot/program partition - wrong! /home to CDR and try re-installing as dual boot, but the NEC restore CD did not give me the option to give less space to XP with fdisk, so I let it run its course and restore to factory settings. Unfortunately it refused to boot so now I'm back to Mdk only.
It came with XP. I wanted to run Mdk 9.1 so I thought I'd go for a dual boot.
In the process of installing Mdk I accidently nuked the wrong wrong windows partition (I nuked
Later, I decided to burn
The only thing I needed windows for was the Intel 537 modem chip. I d/l'ed a driver for 536 which I'm going to try though.
At least I can plug the laptop into my desktop via cat 5 x-over cable and share the net that way. Mdk detected the lappie's eth0 without any problems.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
have you ever setup a server. Its the same process. Buy a machine from IBM, and it will give you a Boot CD, and thats the only way you can setup your server cause it has all the driver.
But you can always setup the machine up your own way, decided you have the necessary deivers(from the net or something).. In some cases i even had to extract the drivers from the vendor CD's(dont know if tis even illegal or not) but it doesnt always work..it depends..
Bottom line
Thats the way it has been a long time ago.. welcome to the computer field.
The lunatic is in my head
You stupid fucking moron. God DAMN.
This is nothing new. I've been at Best Buy for 2 years, and every machine sold there, be it HP, Compaq, Toshiba, Sony, or Emachines, has the os setup as a (ghost/powerdeploy/driveimage) image on a set of self booting cds. In fact, all modern HPs use hidden hard drive partitions with compressed system images on them. In linux fdisk, you will see them listed as type 12 (Compaq Diagnostics). When customers screw up their MBRs, I regularly have to use fdisk from a Knoppix cd to fix it or force the recovery partition to become active and unhidden. This makes programs like Partition Magic all the more handy to have around.
Microsoft has been doing this ever since they started barring OEM's from providing full versions of the OS on the CD's supplied with a new computer.
To reinstall the OS now, the entire hard drive must be wiped, returning it to the exact state it was when it left the factory. This is a very shrewd anti-Linux move by MS. They have effectively made it impossible for people to repartition and reinstall Windows in a way that coexists with Linux, or any other OS for that matter.
The thing to do is to make Linux install itself using the existing Windows filesystems already on the disk! The distribution Phat Linux is designed for just this, I have heard.
http://www.phatlinux.com/
It installs to an existing FAT32 or NTFS partition, and Linux is represented as a directory on a Windows drive! This is a good way to let people try out Linux without risking their Windows installation.
What would be wonderful is a distribution that is standalone on a CD like Knoppix, and if the user likes what they see on the CD, they can also choose to install it to their hard drive in a Windows-safe way like Phat Linux. It will be great when we see a distribution like this, and it will really reduce people's fear of having Linux run on their computer. When they lose their fear of Linux, and are ready to take full advantage of it, they will then be ready to run it completely from its own partition.
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
My sister and her husband bought an absolutely horrendous piece of crap Packard Bell several years ago. It came with one of these lovely discs that wipe your HD and restor it to a "factory state". (Windows, with a sheitload of annoying, not to mention buggy, PackardBell spam and adware)
At some point the computer finally gave up and collapsed under the weight of all the spamware it had been subjected to. They gave me a call and asked me to come over and take a look at it. I told them I'd pop over later on in the evening. Unfortunately, my brother-in-law decided he'd try to fix it before I got there... with Packard Bell's image disc. Financial records, their digital cam photo collection, my sisters grades (she's a teacher), and a thousand other useful things... Gone. Toast. Whoops! I took a red magic marker (the kind teachers seem to have oodles of) and labelled the offending disc "EVIL!". That was about all I could do.
I'm sure my sister and her husband are not the only tech-unsavvy people who have fallen victim to these image discs of EVIL, and they've never even heard of Linux! These discs have been around for quite some time and I'm sure any manufacturer that uses them gets plenty of tech-support calls as a result. The only reason to use these discs seems to be that they let manufacturers include all sorts of annoying and useless software with their name on it. Frankly, it's a stupid practice and it hurts more than just Linux users.
I put slackware for one os and freeBSD for the other and use the XP cd for a coaster. Problem solved :)
Pretty simple, really.
vmware rocks! It also saves you the hassle of having to re-install windows all the time - just make a backup of your drive C file after your first windows install!
--jeff++
ipv6 is my vpn
Microsoft prohibits distributing copies. The only way you can offer restore discs is if you are a commodity vendor, where MS doesn't give you CD's (like the big OEM's), just licenses. They then press out restore CD/DVD's. This is the valid windows.
For smaller OEM's that buy OEM versions of windows and distribute CD. The only restore option they can offer is an image stored on a partition on the HD and a disk that has the software to restore it. They cannot place the restore on CD, because they are also distributing the original CD - hence they have made a copy.
I know it sounds totally stupid, but that is the way it works. And considering the big OEM's have to please Joe Average, they must offer restore discs that make things a snap. So you get the situation described here.
The motherboards on HP machines are 'tattoed' so that when you use the restore cd's the drivers for that particular machine are loaded. Otherwise you have to hunt down the drivers and load them manually.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
solution seems simple. Run a single-boot system. Make it boot only Linux! (or *BSD, or whatever, anything but Windows!) This is why I am switching from Windows; I ain't anybody's fsck-thing!
Just to totally avoid pure FUD, I feel a few things should be noted:
2.) Toshiba's have a problem of having their own "helping" software that when you boot with a net connection it will call home and download "updates" automatically for you. One such update was for my model to cut the clock speed in half.
This was for Intel's Speedstep tech. This cuts the CPU down when the machine is idle in order to conserv on battery life. Mhz programs will read the CPU as half-speed, because your machine isn't doing anythign else...which leads to:
3.) Every toshiba I've owned has horrible battery life, you might as well consider them a computer with a built in UPS and easy to move around, and not a "portable laptop".
I'm not saying it was right for them to force those updates on you, but I hope you can at least see the connection.
I just realized that after i posted it sigh. Sometimes you get idea stuck in your head and cant see the forest for the trees... Well to be get back on topic earlier this year helped get a Dell for a very good friend It actualy did come with a real XP CD as well as the those restore thingys.
i ran into a similar siutation w/ a 'Sotec' laptop - the XP software came on a 3 cd image set which used Symantec Ghost to copy it to the hard drive as one big NTFS partition.
step 1: use partition magic to shrink the installed NTFS down to managable size.
step 2: install linux.
step 3: use dd to image the NTFS off to cdrom
to create new XP recovery set of desired size.
step 4: rock!
If you want to say it is legal, say it.
It is not fair use. Fair use is a legal concept for legally using something a copyrighted item you didn't buy/license.
This is clearly not what you mean here. You mean that you feel this use would fall under the license you already paid for.
Why take your top of the line laptop and hamper it with your lowest version of the OS?
On a product this expensive, you think they could hide the extra $40 in COGS.
It's even a differentiating product for Toshiba, in terms of display size in a shipping Wintel notebook.
Can this be an OEM decision, or does Microsoft decide what versions of XP get to be bundled with what classed of OEM hardware?
Lemme guess.... Barbie Pet Rescue prinstalled as well?
To have ambition was my ambition.
My mother bought a Tosh about four months ago. She came and visited me to help her configure the notebook.
When she arrived I wiped her disk and installed my Windows XP Professional (Linux would have been too much for her). So I am happily installing. GUESS what at the end of the install three of four things do NOT work. I could tweak till the cows came home NOTHING, NADA. I thought it was a buggy machine.
Then I thought, lets play this game and install the DVD. Took about an hour and volia EVERYTHING works. In others words TOSH even with the same operating system did a REAL custom build. There are drivers that only work with "their build" of Windows XP. The drivers could not be manually installed. REALLY CRAPPY...
Result? I WILL NEVER EVER again buy a TOSH. These guys make Apple look like an Open System.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Trust me on this one... You do not understand the problem.
It happened with my mothers notebook. When she bought it about four months ago she decided to visit me so that I could tune it.
First thing I did was wipe the disk and put on Windows XP (Linux was a bit much for her). So off I go installing...installing. After the initial install I manually installed all the drivers. Well I could tweak all I wanted, two or three things would not work. I was puzzled and said, Mom, I think you have a dud. This was bad since in a week she was about to fly to South America to visit my sister.
Then on a hunch I thought, lets play this game like Tosh says. I install off the DVD and guess what. EVERYTHING WORKED. I mean absolutely everything.
I looked at her configuration and thought, S**T they did a custom build job. What I REALLY find scary about this is that you cannot do proper backups and are subject to their rules when it comes to upgrading, etc. TOSH really screwed over their customer.
So, in fact the original poster has a point. Tosh is doing something they should not be doing... Result, do not buy a TOSH because you will be screwed...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
It happened with my mothers notebook. When she bought it about four months ago she decided to visit me so that I could tune it.
First thing I did was wipe the disk and put on Windows XP Professional (Linux was a bit much for her). So off I go installing...installing. After the initial install I manually installed all the drivers. Well I could tweak all I wanted, two or three things would not work. I was puzzled and said, Mom, I think you have a dud. This was bad since in a week she was about to fly to South America to visit my sister.
Then on a hunch I thought, lets play this game like Tosh says. I install off the DVD and guess what. EVERYTHING WORKED. I mean absolutely everything.
I looked at her configuration and thought, S**T they did a custom build job. What I REALLY find scary about this is that you cannot do proper backups and are subject to their rules when it comes to upgrading, etc. TOSH really screwed over their customer.
So, in fact the original poster has a point. Tosh is doing something they should not be doing... Result, do not buy a TOSH because you will be screwed... Or TOSH just wants to sell you THEIR CD's...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
It is called fraud. Done. A PC, by definition, can boot a number of OSs (I'd list them, but everyone on /. would have an issue about the order I'd list them in). That's a problem. But *you* folks can go there -- I won't.
RHCE; are you certified? Karma: ambiguous.
That Knoppix CD makes a great tool, and a great demo besides. At the beginning of this month, my hard drive crapped out, wrecking my Linux partition; using Knoppix, I was able to boot up, run fsck, and salvage what I could (FTPing it to our home server, from there to my wife's WinXP notebook, and burning it to CD) before reinstalling the whole system. I didn't use Knoppix to reinstall--I downloaded a Debian Woody install CD and went from there to unstable--but the Knoppix disc came in handy a few times during the process as things broke and I needed to repair them. (I like that it groks ReiserFS, as that's what I'm using on one of my partitions now.) I even tried booting my wife's notebook (a Toshiba 1955-S801, kind of the "precursor" series to the P25s) from the Knoppix CD, and it was able to bring up X and KDE very nicely from the get-go, without touching her WinXP installation on the hard drive. Damn, that disc is a nice piece of work. Just remember to boot it up with the "lang=us" option :-).
Be who you are...and be it in style!
Toshiba's Windows CD's contain a symantec ghost .gho file which contains an image of a preconfigured windows installation, they use a cut down bootable version of ghost to re-image the disk.
If you want to dual boot, then you can purchase a copy of Ghost, create a boot floppy (or CD) with CD drivers and use it to copy the ghost image from the Toshiba supplied CD to a partition instead of using the CD's default of having the image span to fill the whole disk. Not really rocket science and it saves you having to pay M$ for another copy of windows.
If Toshiba weren't so crap in the first place, they could have included this functionality on the CD, probably at no cost.
To Toshiba's credit though... it is alot quicker to image a copy of windows to the disk than it is to install it (~8 minutes), and that includes all the drivers and any additional software (e.g DVD player) that Toshiba bundled with the machine.
cost 299 US$ for the workstation license.
Same here, got a Compaq Presario 2100 that uses a similar backup ustility for all the software thus preventing full operation of a dualboot laptop. The OS install cd is thankfully available separately but all the software that you pay for is part of a package deal that requires you use NTFS on the entire HD. Somehow the companies get away with this, I certainly don't like it.
-Tim Louden
The last two Intel based machines I bought didn't have Windows on them more than 5 minutes after bringing them home. Drop in that FreeBSD CD and and away MS goes.
You do have a choice. Are games and MS MediaPlayer resources more important to you than your freedom? Programming in Java, PHP, XUL, and other platform neutral languages will allow you to eat and develop on the platform of your choice while deploying on the platform of your customers' choice. All it takes is a decision from you to do away with that Microsoft partition.
It may not be easy at first, but no life changing decision is. Are you willing to take your life into your own hands? Or just complain the rest of your life about how Microsoft and the computer manufacturers are out to undermine you?
It is your choice to click through Bill's License. If you really don't agree with it, drop in that FreeBSD, RedHat, SuSE, Debian, ... CD and and be free!
--I tried using qtparted on my ancient Toshiba Tecra 520 laptop's 4-gig drive *today* and it failed. That was with Knoppix 2003-0606 BTW, the latest non-dvd version. Couldn't even resize hda1 (Fat32) from 1-gig to fill up the rest of the free space on the drive, which should have been simple.
--There *is* still a reason to buy Partition Magic. qtparted still hasn't released version 1 yet, they're still at like 0.3.3 or something. The software is still pretty unstable and quite frankly, I don't trust it. PartitionMagic I've used dozens of times, and only had 1 problem - and that was back with version 7.0.
.
== WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
Companies have been doing this for years. It's because the average user can't set up partitions or walk through a windows installation so it just rewrites your harddrive.
Don't they legally have to give youa full and proper cd?
oogly boogly!
isn't this Copying as opposed to Installing an OS?
If it does not work this way, then you'll have to resize your existing partition and install linux (dual booting) and make your own new recovery disks. Lets say two, one for your Windows and one for your New Linux install.
Like many people here have noticed, this is not an overly difficult process. Surely you must have thought of resizing your partitions and making your own recovery disks? But then again... Maybe your just trying to stir up trouble.
Being called a dork on Slashdot must be like being called the retard in special ed.
its about bad business practices, where companies make deals with Hardware vendors about USING technology in such a way that competition gets stifled, and they ARE getting away with it...
/Dread
Rescue CD's without partition options are just that, and they suck. There outta be a LAW against them!
And Im saying this as a professional multi OS licenced system engineer, NOT as a home linux zealot (which I am too, but there the solution is easy)
peace,
It might be less of a problem from people like Dell rather than smaller firms, but I still will never truts a vendor drive image.
What if they have 'conveniently' installed something like Gator on there for you? Or even their own custom internal reporting tool? No thanks.
Now, I know that installing Windows from scratch can be said to be installing spyware (thanks to WMP etc) - but at least the crap it sends out is well documented and you stand a small chance of finding it and stopping it. With a drive image you have no idea what settings are enabled and what software is installed.
Beep beep.
Toshiba laptops have been a royall pissoff for me for nearly two years. I used to swear by Toshiba until they went with this legacy free BIOS bullshit. For me, they're history. I swear by Dell products now.
- IP
I work doing help desk stuff supporting lots of OEMs. This practice is the norm. Packard Bell have a hidden partition, activated usign the switcher command, but if a virus or something has messed it up you fork out £20-£30 on Master CDs. Advents come with a CD which you can order for £5 from www.dsgrecovery.com. HP machines again recover from the hard drive, if you order the quick recovery CDs and run them, they recreate the recovery partitions. eMachines literally use Symantecs Ghost to recover the computer. Medion computers do come with a WinXP cd but 99% of the time the customer should use the application and support CD to recover the computer. Compaq use a recovery partion, and if the partitions need recreating the use a Softpaq floppy disk which automatically creates the partitions the compaq way, manually doing anything with these floppies is difficult at best. And yes, there are other OEMs we support ... including Toshibas.
... well, we do, SP1 did correct several of these, but there are still reasons to, want some examples, well unmountable boot volume, ISSASS.exe error on startup, unmountable boot volume, missing NTLDIR ...
... guess how we do that, that's right, we get the customer to reinstall ... it's the only way to be sure!
... drivers already in place, and a fair few of the apps the customers want already installed.
I saw a comment earlier saying this is Windows XP and we don't reinstall
and on telephone support we need to be certain that the problem is a hardware one before we send an engineer out
How many linux instalations would survive these recovery processes I'm very uncertain about, but I suspect they would not. on the positive side, they do make setting up the computer a breeze
Is this a bit of a non story, kind of, it's been the case for years, but I guess for people who don't touch OEM computers it can be an eye opener.
Sorry about posting AC, but with my job, it seems prudent.
I had a toshiba laptop for two years, for school use. It was basically on all day during the week, and then on for two to three days straight during the weekend.
:P
I never had any real problems with it. It didn't get that hot, the screen didn't do anything weird, none of the components failed on me. The battery life was actually pretty good. And the thing I liked the most about it was that it didn't have one of those idiotic newer touchpad things for the mouse. Fucking hate those.
Anyway, I'm not saying they're the greatest thing since sliced bread, but I really didn't have problems with mine.
Oh, it was a Satellite 2800 if I recall correctly. Pentium 3 500mhz, 128mb ram, 12gb hd.
I forgot, the floppy drive did break... but that was my fault (don't ask)
About its safeness: "Since July of 2002, when ntfsresize became publicly available, there were many success reports for both enlarging and shrinking Windows XP/2000/NT4 and Windows Server 2003 NTFS filesystems on both workstation and server versions (Home, Professional, Server, Advanced Server). No destroyed filesystem was reported who followed the instructions correctly".
Do you think they and Mandrake would release it as stable otherwise? Also note, the Linux-NTFS team is not the one who wrote the well known broken NTFS driver, that can destroy data. This is also explained on the above pages. There are two NTFS drivers and most distros use their driver. They also list who use which driver.
There are other myths rebuted and explained on their pages, IMHO it's worth a look.
More to the point of anti-trust law suits, shouldnt it be a legal requirement for pc manufacturers to give the option to buy their computers without an OS? That way you could just buy the laptop without windows and without having to pay for windows.
And screw anyone who says that if you buy a computer without windows its because your going to use a pirate copy, thats like saying if you buy an MP5 your going to use it to mow people down. True, you probably are, but dont you have the 'right' to be given the benifit of the doubt and buy the gun anyway?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
One technique I've used when a drive is unbootable but still readable is to put a fresh drive in as the main one, install the OS.
Connect the second one to the other channel.
When you need drivers, simply browse to (drive letter)\windows\inf and it should pick up on the right inf file and start coping the vxd and dll files.
Here's the REAL problem with recovery CDs: when you screw up your Windows installation and want to fix it, customer "service" response is to put in the recovery CD and let it go.
Of course, when that's finished, the customer goes looking for his old documents, pictures, programs and emails etc.... whoops, they've gone!!
It's your classic short sightedness of Microsoft to place your data on the same partition as the OS, so if your OS gets hosed, your data is gone too unless you are smart enough not to delete the old partition(s) by using a recovery CD in the first place!!
THAT is the major problem with the way recovery CDs work. Plus of course, as others have mentioned, a side effect of the partition killing recovery CDs is they wipe any other OS or data partition even if you HAD made them separate.
First thing I ALWAYS do when installing Windows for someone is to create a separate data partition and link My Documents etc to it. Then I tell them that if their Windows crashes and they need to reinstall (from a real CD) without my help, to only allow the setup routine to FORMAT C: and NOT to delete the partition itself.
The quickness with which supposedly reputable companies tell their customers to reinstall Windows without thought for their data, 99% of the time located in C:\Documents and Settings, is amazing. Operating systems can be reinstalled no problems, recovering your data is much harder if you've killed your old partition or overwritten the data space with a new OS install.
Quizo69
Visceral Psyche Films
BootIt advertises that it can be configured to boot from everything. Haven't tried it yet. See the 11th bulleted item: "booting any partition on any hard drive"
My laptop does the same thing. It dual boots XP and Linux without a problem.
;)
There's this crazy thing called defragmenting, resizing and sliding of partitions. (Slide may be uneccessary depending on your hardware/Linux flavor.)
Really, if you know how to install Linux, resize/slide isn't a very difficult thing to do.
Finding software to do it - now there's a problem. Would that there was some easy to use (key words) GNU software for it.
This is not a new issue at all. In this post I will write a bit about my own experiences with this and similar schemes. I recently bought an IBM Thinkpad for a friend of mine, through a summer offering at work. When we unpacked the machine, I was surprised to see that no recovery CD was included. It's been common practice to include an image CD that will wipe the entire harddrive out instead of installation disks that takes you through the usual Windows install procedure but in this case no disks were included at all. It turns out the recovery software is included in a protected area of the harddrive. Note that this is NOT a partition. It's a special area that has direct support in some of the later ATA specifications for harddrives. Basically, the BIOS can send the drive a special command which will make it act like a smaller disk through the usual ATA commands. Obviously there are still special ways to access the data however to the operating system, the drive will appear to be reduced in size and the hidden area will be inaccessible. In other words, users of fdisk and other partition tools shouldn't be able to affect this area. This special area contains images of the pre-installed software but it also contains some other programs that can be used for diagnostics/configuration. It allows the user access to a "graphical" BIOS setup utility during bootup for example. There are also some space left for user backups using special IBM tools. The programs and recovery procedures are accessed by pressing a special button on the keyboard during boot-up. A note included with the machine says you can order a recovery CD from IBM if you change hardrives or if the usual recovery procedure doesn't work. In the BIOS setup utility there's an option to disable the secret area. This will allow the user to reclaim the space taken by the hidden area of the disk. There's no mention of how to re-establish this area once you have deleted it. Obviously this would require CD's with the recovery software. I don't know if that's what you can order from IBM ie if the recovery CDs mentioned will not only the visible portion of the drive but will also re-establish the hidden area. I'm a bit concerned about this because the note included with the machine said the CDs would restore the machine to a state that resembles the state of the shipped machines (IBM's italics). Note that this is a translation of the Danish note which was probably originally written in English (a so-called "retroversion"). In the Danish version the word in itallics is "ligner" which in this context is close to the English word "resembles". My worry is that the reason for this choice of wording is that the features requiring the hidden area won't work. Does anyone here have experience with this? What I don't like about this "feature" is that it takes up a lot of space. More than 6% of the drive space is reserved for the hidden area. In addition to this, there's a huge i386 directory on the C-drive, in the visible area of the disk, used to store drivers and optional Windows components the user might need later. The hidden area obviously contains these files as well, but since they are invisible to the operating system there has to be a seperate copy on the C-drive (in addition to the installed versions of the files). There is also a directory containing various optinal software not installed in the "shipped state". This data too is available in hidden area but again a duplicate is needed to be able to install on the fly. If the user installs the software there will now be 3 (!) versions of the program on the disk (where one will be removeable - the "i386" dir will not be removeable however). I think it would be much better to include the original install disks for all software (perhaps modified so that they would only install on the machine they were shipped with). In this way only one version of the software would have to be on the HD, and the user could insert the shipped CD's when the disk failed or optional components were needed. My first PC had a much better
Excuse me, but most new systems now come with Windows XP pre-installed and a rescue disk to restore it to its original state, rather than proper install disks when all goes pair shape.
I dont really see this as a problem, since everyone I know would install Windows first, then install a partition program (Partition Magic etc) and then resize to give some space for linux.
This isnt really a problem, more of a minor niggle - I can see a lot of people trying to make a mountain out of a molehill.
I only ask because:
Microsoft shall not restrict by agreement any OEM licensee from exercising any of the following options or alternatives:
4 Offering users the option of launching other Operating Systems from the Basic Input/Output System or a non-Microsoft boot-loader or similar program that launches prior to the start of the Windows Operating System Product.
If someone at Toshiba tells you "icrosoft told us to do it" We can all play the litigation game again
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
I've been driving myself shitless for the last three weeks trying to find a reasonably usable graphical open source partition tool!
If delivering lots of CDs is such a bad idea, why does AOL still do it? I guarantee you most of those never get used.
I don't think you're used to maunfacturing hundreds of thousands of something. For instance, lots of times you'll see CD duplication ads: 1000 for $1000, and then 2000 for $1500, and maybe 5000 for $2000. It works out to, like you say, pennies.
If I'm making a $1000 profit on every laptop I sell, and it costs me a quarter to include a driver CD with them, no matter how many laptops I sell, the driver CD is a miniscule fraction of the overall profit of the product.
No, what happens is that people get pressured to cut costs somehow, and deliver some report saying "I can increase revenue by $250,000" and the boss goes for it, because he's getting pressure from above, and someone buys one, uses it and gets lots of ad- and spy-ware on it, their tech-savvy friend offers to help them out and wipes their hard drive in order to reinstall the system from scratch, asks for the system and driver CDs, I don't have them, well find them, it didn't come with any, that's stupid of course it came with some, maybe you're stupid, fine fix it yourself.
And the user is left with a blank machine and a bad taste in their mouth. No wonder people are switching to OSX.
c-hack.com |
Sorry, did I miss something? Computers, particularly notebooks, have been coming with only a "restore to the original settings" CD for years. That's why you need to acquire a partition manager to dual-boot.
All's true that is mistrusted
that too many people accept to get forced to buy the MS-OS with the hardware. With laptops, Windows is nearly always not an option, but something you simply cannot avoid. Too few people are asking for OS-less hardware or hardware with Linux preinstalled. Combine this with the fact that MS gives huge rebates on a presinstalled OS. The problem is that discussing this heatedly over a beer or at /. (or both) won't change anything. Creating demand and a market for Windows-less notebooks will. Bugging the salespeople everytime you buy a notebook will. Showing them that there is a real demand there and not just a small but irrelevant bunch of geeks with no money will.
The top-level G5 sells for $3000 USD. It may be $5K if you buy it maxed out with Apple-installed (read: grossly overpriced) RAM and hard drives, but doing this yourself post-purchase is MUCH more economical.
Likewise, the top-level powerbook, in its base configuration is $3300 USD, not $4000. Still not cheap, but not as much as you say. Remember, I'm talking about the top-of-the-line models here (the dual 2.0GHZ G5 and the 17-inch Powerbook), the other models are substantially less.
The only way a base-level G5 CPU sells for anywhere close to five thousand dollars is if you're in Australia.
How does this make it a bigger pain? this has been going on forever, Compaq is terrible for this.
I was wondering about this CD-Key sticker on the bottom of the computer. One day insted of dealing with the 3 disk OEM set-up they reformats my HDD (and partition record), I borrowed my friends retail version of WinXP HE, it turns out it says my CD-Key is invaild? Should I call HP and demand a new key?
Apparently, Microsoft is the root cause of all the Restoration CD's. It is now against MS policy for an OEM Windows distributor to include a full install Windows CDROM with their systems. The OEM's no longer have any choice in the matter and must only distribute a restoration CDROM/DVD with their systems!
This is why everyone only get's restoration CD's. It used to be that you got both a Restoration CD and the full official MS installation version of Windows. But even then this CD would not upgrade nor install if there was any other OS installed on the system.
The whole point is to make it difficult for people to buy a new PC with a new version of Windows and then install it on a second older PC.
This is why we pirate software.
take advantage of "Windows Refund Day" - for those of you who didn't know, it's the day when everyone who didn't boot Windows takes advantage of the clause in the EULA that allows them to return Windows (and only Windows, not the whole laptop/desktop) for a full refund!
He's already got the serial numbers for his working copy. He should be able to get someones backup copy of XP and do an install with it. Another possibility is to backup/compress his existing file system. Maybe it will take 2 CD's instead of 1 DVD, but no reason this guys bitch should get it's own article.
Always remember to make a few off-site backup copies of your CD's with your friends.
Take "Windows" DVD and crack it in half.
Insert Linux or FreeBSD boot disk.
Erase entire HD.
Install.
Whats the problem?
As long as you use MS products, you will always have to deal with them trying to force you to use them on their terms, wether their motivation is monopolization, cutting costs, or trying to make it more 'convenient' for the clueless masses to continue being clueless.
The instant you quit the Windows habit altogether, you are completely free.
For extra points, break the DVD into smaller pieces and send them back to the vendor using the "Business Reply" envelope they gave you to return their privacy-invading survey to them. (Ether without the survey, with it torn to bits, or with complete nonense answers. Be sure to remove or obliterate any pre-printed serial numbers which may be present) Even though they try to scare you into thinking your warranty wont be good if you dont 'register' - thats just more FUD. They are required to honor your warranty regardless.
My answer to the grammer nazi's (I suck at Grammer so I nitpick Math) .... wait for it.... still zero
multiplying anything by any number of zero's is
So if I multiply elephant by 000,000,000.00 I still have nothing
Thank you.
I go away now
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
I dual booted my XP home box from HP. Didn't need the windows CD. Just resize the partition with PM, install Linux, and there you go. As long as you can access the DVD drive, you are fine.
So if this is Toshiba CD has XP already set up, as if it is already set up on the hard drive, how hard would it be to prepare a CD boot partition, or floppy boot disk that runs XP off the CDROM? Maybe linux could reside on the hard drive, and XP could run off the CD (for those rare cases when you *need* to game, or *need* to use Illustrator/Photoshop).
No, it will fail. You don't think their little utility will be bright enough to resize the image, do you? Of course not! It's designed in part to insure nothing but that obsolete OS gets used on the PC. In time, when the upgrade train rolls on, the user will be left without new Windoze drivers for the new Windoze O$ and unable to "upgrade" and will be forced to buy, ta-da, another laptop! That's why they do this.
In any case, few people will have the savy to even attempt your scheme. Those that do will simply use partimage to back up their current installation for reimplemntation, work and all NTFS may give them a headache.
Another thing you might not have considered is that the BIOS may refuse to boot off anything but a signed DVD. Oh dear, it's a paperweight.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Sometimes I buy the 20 lb sack of potatoes at Costco, knowing that I will end up throwing half of them away (or give some to neighbors) - because it is still cheaper than buying them in smaller quantities.
Last time I bought a $1600 Dell notebook, it came with WinXP. First thing I did was reformat the disk and put Linux on it. Would Dell have sold the thing for less w/o the OS? I dunno, the notebook had the hardware features I wanted at a price I was willing to pay.
There is a lot of duplicated functionality, package overlap in the Linux distros, too. Pick the bits you want toss the rest. Bits don't take up much space in the landfills.
Just looking around, say dell.com and eracks.com - compare two comparable (hardware specs) laptops and I don't see the Linux OS costing any less.
Where you pay a lot is when you don't have a MSFT OS and you actually want to buy one, the retail price is much more than the small delta you pay with a new system that "just comes with" it.
I am not saying it is "right", or that there aren't "odd" agreements in place to make it so, I just don't think that it is affecting the economics of your hardware purchase that much.
Not a troll, just a calm observation.
This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
Really? I thought Microsoft had patents that kept free software from writing to NTFS. Well, certian version of NTFS at least. here is a cluefull letter about NTFS and installs. I imagine that parted is state of the free art, and that M$ can make their crap a pain in the ass at any time.
If YOU fuck up Windows (Blaming Microsoft is easier, but fact is, Windows is most often mangled by incompetent users doing stuff they shouldn't be doing.) then it is YOUR responsibility to have made proper backups of the full HD with Linux already installed. Same thing applies when it is NOT your fault, your data is still your responsibility
The only fault a user has when dealing with Microsoft software is the fact that they decided to use Microsoft. It is impossible for a Microsoft user to take proper precations and make up for the ill will and malice Microsoft has for them. Data loss is NEVER the user's fault. Where do you get off telling us that we should not be putting an alternate OS onto our computers? What other "stuff" shouldn't we be doing? Fold up your "blame the user" FUD till it's all sharp corners and stick it up your ass.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If you are going to make your own image, check out partimage, a projcet for doing just that.
The only thing you have to wonder is if you can boot off that DVD at all. Hmmmm, Windows Pain, why bother with it?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
There's not much "risk" of that. The probability of Windoze failure is 1:1. Microsoft is the source of pain. The less you have to do with them, the less pain you suffer.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's not supposed to work. That CD key is for an OEM install, while the CD you have is most likely a retail CD. You need to either (1) score an OEM WinXP CD (some places will sell OEM software with some cheap hardware (like an old 486 or Pentium, or even an IDE cable) thrown in to make it a qualified purchase) or (2) use the WinXP keygen (it's out there) to create a CD key that works with a retail CD (or a corporate CD or whatever you have).
20 January 2017: the End of an Error.
most true gamers own consoles now. The PC gaming market is shrinking.
Unlike Wintel PC and Mac games, console games do not support user-developed modifications. The GameCube, GBA, and stock PS2 lack a writable storage medium that's big enough, and the Xbox is in last place worldwide among the four. Furthermore, the console makers tend to believe that user-developed mods promote unlawful copying of their copyrighted games.
Unlike consoles, Wintel PCs and Macs ship with the proper input devices for first-person shooters, real-time tactical simulations, and online role-playing games.
Will I retire or break 10K?
tryed both (retail and oem and in few versions, older and newer, even corporative which doesn't need activation), they don't work.
HP's Win install is not even an option, because it comes with preinstalled Norton which cannot be uninstalled, at least in this reality (if you ever tryed you know, but if uninstall was satisfactory for you you haven't checked Nortons leftovers).
Norton is a no go situation for me, never in my life I would install anything that Symantec made on any of my computers.
I even called M$ support, where they sid I should get some other serial and use it as mine, which makes a problem for updating. (but they were unable to get me some legal confirmation of that)
In the end I left with one option only. To use WinXP legal-illegal combination and believe that this is correct option.
After that I just erased Windows and installed Linux. I was intending to have 3GB win partition only (only reason to have that is HP battery recovery sogftware), but I ended up with no Windows although I paid for them.
So, if that doesn't bother you, it bothers me.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Besides, all it's good for is playing games...
At Best Buy, a Windows XP Professional license ($300) costs more than an Xbox console ($180) and a TV tuner card ($50). Even the home edition ($200) is no cheaper than a GameCube console with Game Boy Player ($150) and a TV tuner card.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Whats more the vendors do make it clear what your getting if you know where to look.
I looked on the major notebook computer vendors' web sites for a laptop computer designed to run GNU/Linux, and I failed it. I guess I don't know where to look. Can anybody else help me?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Can the newer machines from Dell, Compaq, Gateway, Toshiba, etc. boot from a USB storage device? If so, put the boot loader and kernel on a USB flash drive and start the machine that way. A USB flash drive isn't that much bigger than your car keys; think of it as putting the key in to start your computer.
Will I retire or break 10K?
that and partimage are very nice. Part image does not promise NTFS stuff will work, however. The general problems of M$ making things difficult are not ever going to go away and those who make tools to interact with NTFS risk bad things from bad laws.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...didn't read the moderation guidelines, or just don't know what a troll is.
Right, and miss out on the huge library of games already available for the PC.
And there's not a huge collection of Linux games, PS2 games, or GameCube games? Linux can play at least 25% of Windows games through WINE, the PS2 can play 99% of PS1 games, and the GameCube can play 99% of Game Boy and GBA games.
shoddy collection of dross available on the Xbox.
For one thing, I suggested GameCube as an alternative. Or s/an Xbox/a PS2/g in grandparent.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Dual -> triple? Doesn't work.
Should be trial boot.
For example, Mandrake's Diskdrake, which is part of the easy installation too ;) I'm new at this, I first installed Linux dual-boot in April, and at that point Diskdrake was the only free (free as in no money) program I could find that could resize NTFS partitions. The bother about it is that it only runs DURING Mandrake's installation procedure. However, people say you can just run Diskdrake, cancel the install, and then install another distro.
There's probably some other program out there by now that does this but I figured I'd mention it anyway.
Microsoft Works: Oxymoron of the year. ~ ^.^
bar
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.