Re: Problems partioning XP disk
Eric Dickner wrote:
Hello All.
Starting right off the bat in the set of instructions for installing on an
existing disk running Windows I have a problem. Section 3.6.1.1 tells you
to create a bootable floppy with the "sys a:" command, something that I have
done in the past on older versions of Windows but apparently does not work
now:
C:\>sys a:
'sys' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.
This command is not available after Win2K; it was a DOS/Win95/98/ME tool.
Using an older system disk made in the past with the "fips" tool on it,
again as section 3.6.1.1 tells you to do, will not work either; the system
will not boot into DOS.
Is the machine trying to boot from the floppy? If not, you'll need to
change that setting in the BIOS.
If it is, and the system disk is indeed "older", I suspect the floppy
has become damaged/deteriorated.
XP has a disk management tool of its own but I
don't trust it. For one thing it tells me that the size of my disk is the
amount that is filled an that I have zero free bytes.... I don't want any
part of it.
What do we do for a "lossless" XP install?
XP is probably sitting on an NTFS-formatted partition. In such a
situation, fips is useless anyway.
If XP is on a FAT32 partition, fips should work okay for you.
However, any time you play with partitions, you're risking loss.
And trying to free up a partition _after_ Windows is installed is a
pain. I'd highly recommend using a second drive for Linux if you have
one available. Otherwise, back up your XP partition, use whatever tool
to repartition and format, then restore XP. Or you could shell out the
bucks and buy a copy of Partition Magic or some other commercial
partitioning tool, but again, there's always a risk of loss.
--
Kent
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