[ltp] Re: T43 and Linux problems

Michael Rudolf linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Sun, 25 Dec 2005 16:43:14 +0100


Just to add my experience, in case it helps:

I installed PCLinuxOS Pre .92 on a T43 without problems. It had one single 
Windows NTFS partition in addition to the obligatory recovery partition. I 
booted PCLinuxOS from the LiveCD and used the GUI partitioning tool to 
shrink the NTFS partition by 10 GB. I didn't do defragmentation on the 
Windows side before. Then I went on installing PCLinuxOS to the new 
partition in the standard way and got a working dual boot configuration 
with lilo.

The only caveat: Later, I tried to shrink the Windows partition by one more 
GB in the same way. But this time, I defragmented the drive in Windows 
beforehand. But no luck this time: when I tried to boot into Windows 
afterwards I got a blue screen very early during boot. Fortunately, the 
partition could be restored by booting from a Windows recovery System off 
another hdd.

There's a chance that the problem was caused due to a usage error on my 
part, or due to the fact that PCLinuxOS uses an older version of 
ntfsresize (1.9.4, while 1.12.0 is current; current versions claim no 
defragmentation is necessary!). May also have been just plain bad luck.

Regards,
Michael