Re: PLAN failed strangely (wes: PLAN: surviving a Windowsreinstall.)
On Sat, 2005-04-02 at 04:32 +1000, Hendrik Boom wrote:
> > Reinstall Windows.
>
> This is where it all went wrong. The Windows ME installer refused
> to recognise the way the C: partition was formatted -- even though
> it had originally created and formatted the partition a year or so ago.
> Telling it to go ahead and format it again didn't work, It did format C:
> while I had dinner, and even reported there were no bad blocks and the
> right partition size, but afterward it again refused to install for the
> same reason.
Haven't you learnt yet that Windows does NOT like to play with anything
else?
> Has there been anything over the ages that maked Linux's partitioning
> incompatible with Windows ME's? Long ago, the Windows partition was
> creted by thw Windows ME installer, and all other partitions were created by Linux.
> I left a guard cylinder between the start of the extended partition and the
> dirst secondary partition, because I have found tht helps prevent patitioning
> fights between Linux and Windows about the secondary partitions. But are
> there other known incompatibilitues bwtween Linux and ME?
What was used to do the partitioning? I've heard that certain hard
drive manufacturers proprietary disk tools (if you're using a Maxtor
drive it's called some like maxblast from memory) can cause this sort of
issue. Remember Windows likes to be installed to c:\ - ie the root of
the hard drive. For Windows/Linux dual boots i'd always recommend two
physical hard drives. It removes all of this partitioning p.i.t.a setup
issues.
> Is there any diagnostic information I should gather? how?
>
> Or is this a subtle indication that my hard disk is failing?
Nah I doubt it. You could try something like:
parted /dev/hd* print
where * represents the drive that you want to investigate. Take note of
the partitions etc, I suspect that when grub/lilo were installed that
they've taken a small chunk at the start of the drive, and therefore
Windows doesn't want to install.
Windows is about the only operating system i've seen that is built to
discourage (and make it harder than it should be) to dual boot. If that
isn't anti commpetitive then I don't know what is.
Dave
> -- hendrik
>
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