--- John Cox & Christine Armond <pkands108@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > --- Olwe Melwasul <olwe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > > Anybody have experience putting Fedora 2 on a Presario 2100 > laptop? I > > > > found a link at http://clevershark.com that talks about F1, > but > > apparently there's different issues between 2.4 and 2.6. The > first > > big > > question is do I need to get Partition Magic to partition the > drive > > (currently totally XPed--with weird Compaq proprietary stuff > on it), > > or > > can Fedora handle the repartitioning...or perhaps Mandrake > 10, as I > > heard a rumor? > > > > Olwe > > > > > > I am dual-booting XP and FC2 on a 2100us. The only problems > I've had > are > 1. with the mousepad --worked fine with FC1 but you will need > to > install the synaptics driver for FC2. I don't really use the > pad so I > didn't do that. > 2. If you connect via dialup you will need a driver. I bought > the one > from Linuxant.com for 15.00 USD. There is a free version out > there > somewhere. > > 3. In order to get P.Magic to work I had to run chkdsk /f to > fix some > errors that PM objected to. I would recommend compacting the > drive > first with swap turned off and also turning off the recovery > feature > until after you change the partitions (XP defragmenter seems to > do a > better job that way). After chkdsk I had no problems with PM. > > Just a note: You won't be able to use your xp recovery disk > after you > change the partition (without wiping out Linux). And if you > have to > reinstall/recover using the xp system disk you will lose most > of the > free software like Norton's, WinDVD,etc. For me that is no > problem. > > Good Luck. > > You can do a complete backup and then repartition the disk using the SysRescueCD. http://www.sysresccd.org/ I did that when I installed FC1 on my Compaq laptop. Since I don't have *any* Windows disks for it for I was very worried about munging up the XP that was on it. First run a complete defrag in Windows to move the empty space to the end of the disk. Then you simply boot on the SysRescueCD. I made several saves of the existing disk blocks using Partimage to write the blocks using Samba to a windows share on another PC. I made the saved files a max size of 700MB so I could later burn them to CD-R. Then I used qt_parted from the SysRescueCD to resize the FAT32 partition to make room for Linux and Linux swap. Afterwards, the Windows partition was perfectly healthy - just smaller when I was done. If the Windows partition is NTFS you might have a different story. Parted can't resize a NTFS partition. I left mine as FAT32 so I could mount and write to it from Fedora. --Mike
