Partition-change w/out HD bootup?

[umdenken]

Hi all,

I want to install Linux to be dual boot on a Thinkpad in a new partition w/out ever booting up in XP Pro. Does that sound possible?

I've purchased partition magic to try out, but it needs to be installed on the Windows partition.

My end goal is to install Suse Linux, but from reading usenet articles, it doesn't sound like the packaged partition resizer can be trusted.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Robb

[s0larian]

With Acronis Diskdirector you could install the Software on some other machine, create there a Boot CD, and booting your Thinkpad with this CD would let you change the size of the partition without ever booting into XP. But before installing Linux don't forget to make a backup oft the MBR if you ever want to be able to boot into XP again.

[umdenken]

Ok, so you're saying that Acronis Diskdirector can run off of a bootable CD? And that what's required for that is just another Windows box to install Acronis on, and with which to create the CD?

[egibbs]

Partition Magic can do the same either with floppies or a CD depending on which version you have. Just install it on another machine and make the "Emergency Rescue" disk or whatever they call it. It's a fully functional DOS version.

I always thought it was cute that a fully functional DOS version of PM will fit on a single floppy, but the Windows version requires 60 MB.

Do be sure to backup the MBR, and if you are planning to use GRUB or another bootloader be aware that you will probably lose access to the pre-desktop area. It requires a special MBR which bootloaders overwrite. I think there is a way around that but don't recall it at the moment.

Ed Gibbs

[umdenken]

Thanks. I want to make it so that the rest of the computer (pre-desktop area, windows partition) function exactly as before, except now in a dual-boot scenario.

From what I've read so far, the best solution is to try and configure the windows boot loader to also boot to the Linux partition?

[egibbs]

To quote my barber, I've already told you more than I know.

I've never built a dual boot system - The few times I've installed Linux I did it on a clean drive. I do know there is tons of info out there about dual booting and TPs however - a lot on this forum, as well as on http://www.linux-laptop.net/ and on http://www.linux-thinkpad.org/ and you can find more sites at http://t.webring.com/hub?ring=linuxthinkpad

Good luck, and when you are done please post your solution here.

Ed Gibbs

[s0larian]

yes, to keep the predesktop area working you must use the XP Bootmanager to boot into grub which should be installed on a separate small (30 MB or so) partition. But to do this you would have to boot into XP once to place the boot file you created under Linux with the dd command and to make one additional entry in boot.ini (there are already some entries in this forum about that topic). Perhaps it is possible doing it from Linux, never tried it. But it could work, why not? And if you never booted into XP the file system should still be FAT, not NTFS. It gets converted during the first start into XP.

[runixd]

hmm, predesktop area has nothing to do with bootmanager and is totally independant on how you boot your computer. If you never booted your thinkpad, that means you still have windows installed on fat32, once you boot it and go through a setup it will convert into ntfs. The options are to get some distro and resize fat with parted (or interface to parted, available in most installers), this is safe, you can then install linux and have linux loader lilo/grub installed into mbr (or partition which you will then make bootable). you will loose nothing. If not, you can boot windows, convert to ntfs and since you have partition magic you can use it to resize partitions. You will then use freed/separated partition to install linux.