[ltp] restoring the first partitiong (c: - /dev/sda2) using ibm system restore

[Jeffrey Taylor]

Quoting nescivi <nescivi@gmail.com>:
> Hi,
> 
> On Wednesday 09 April 2008 05:47:04 Micha wrote:
> > I went to restore system to factory settings under the ibm rescue and
> > restore or however it's called and a few screens later I chose to restore
> > only the c: drive. It said that it is preparing the disk (wiped grub while
> > it was at it) and some time later told me that it couldn't restore the
> > system (no reason why). The same thing worked some time ago when I wanted
> > to reintall windows before I removed it, so I'm guessing that it either
> > looks for a proper partition, partition label, partition type, ntfs file
> > system or windows. Anyone knows how I can make it restore just the windows
> > partition without killing my linux installation by formatting the whole
> > drive (which if I recall correctly didn't work at the time either)
> 
> You can use a partition editor to make the partition in question a FAT32 or 
> NTFS one, without touching the other partitions.
> There are some live cd's that have the program to do it.
> I have used this one for similar reasons (resizing NTFS, and partitioning of 
> the remainder before installing Linux).
> 
> http://www.tux.org/pub/people/kent-robotti/looplinux/rip/
> 
> then, you should be able to get a set of windows cd's from IBM/Lenovo to 
> restore your Windows installation (they have to do this, esp. if for example 
> you need to reinstall your harddrive because you replaced it or 
> something...).
> I'm not sure whether the rescue partition will do the trick.
> 

Be very careful and check with other's experience.  In the past, (i.e. T4x
days), the rescre partition reinstalled Windows in the first partition.  The
rescue CDs overwrote the entire hard drive.  I have re-installed Windows XP on
at T41 several times without wiping out Linux installation.  It has been
several years, but I don't recall having to re-install GRUB.  However, there
has always been a reasonably complete and correct filesystem on the Windows
partition (i.e., re-installing Windows over Windows, not over Linux).

HTH,
  Jeffrey