Format/Partition

[gump420]

The Win9x kernel has to be located before the 1024 cylinder. That is probably exactly the reason you're drive E: won't boot. I would suggest making two smaller bootable partitions (one for 98 and one for ME) and then making a seperate partition for storing documents, MP3s, etc (anything that doesn't rely on a specific OS). Also note that you can't share an application between 98 and ME very easily, although it is possible (takes much more hands on editing of the registry than I personally enjoy), so unless you have an application or piece of hardware that only runs under ME I would suggest using Win98 only.

Or something . . .

[voidmain]

And it may be possible to change your drive geometry in your BIOS so that you only have 1024 cylinders but still have access to the entire disk.  I have done this before but I don't remember what the limitations are. With the newer IDE drives you can put whatever you want in the BIOS (as long as everything adds up to the right total size).  Again, this would take some research for your equipment.  I believe the hard drive manufacturer web sites have instructions on how to do this.

[Calum]

Well, what about if i had win2000 and winME, would i be able to use the bootmanager that i have heard comes with win2000 to dual boot the two? Also, what is this about using the BIOS to change where the cylinders are? I don't think my BIOS is that helpful...
I should be getting a mate to download a newer Linux distribution than the ones i have so when i do, i'll attempt to use the boot managers included with that. In the meantime, i have got all the stuff off the hard drive, and it's just itching to be formatted and started all over again.
Thanks for the help, chaps and possibly chapesses, i appreciate it.

[voidmain]

When you installed your drive you probably had your BIOS set to autodetect the IDE drive on whatever IDE channel you have the drive attached to.  If you look at your BIOS on boot it probably filled in the numbers for you for "Cylinders", "Heads", "Sectors per track".  Write these numbers down.

Now you can instead of set it to Autodetect, select the user defined drive type, it should let you type in your own numbers for when your BIOS can not detect the drive type.  Basically you drop the number of Cylinders below 1024 and increase the number of heads until the math is such that the total disk size is exactly the same as it was with the autodetected settings.  Now you no longer have the 1024 cylinder issue.  And there is nothing wrong with doing this on todays IDE drives.

Like I said, do some more searching first.  I have done this in the past and I used to have a formula for exactly how to figure it.  Do a search, it's out there somewhere. Look at the chart on this link which happened to be the first hit on google for me.  I wouldn't use this page for anything other than to get an idea of what I am talking about and to get an idea for more search terms:

http://math.uwb.edu.pl/~mariusz/multiboot/ii/3.html

[ February 10, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Calum]

Ta, it's a bit alien to me but i will go and persist till it comes off okay.
Now, just a quick query, the last i think for a week or 2 in this forum, till i get that linux disk off my mate, can Linux read from NTFS as well as FAT? Also, a bit of a loser question i know, can Win9x read NTFS? (it would be a laugh if Linux could but Windoze couldn't!) and presumably an NTFS installation of winNT can read FAT?
listen, thanks for all this info, you have been really helpful. I'll post here again in a while like i say, with the results of my many patitioning and reinstalling adventures!

[voidmain]

Yes Linux can read FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, ext2, ext3, xiafs, iso9660, romfs, ufs, qnx4, bfs, xfs, cramfs, hfs, hpfs, adfs, JFS, ReiserFS, minix, and more. Although for NTFS I believe it is still "read-only" access from Linux.  In fact in RedHat 7.2 they left NTFS disabled completely because apparently a bug cropped up in the NTFS code in the kernel they shipped with 7.2.  You can always rebuild the kernel and enable it, or get a newer kernel that has the NTFS bug fixed.  In fact I think you can enable it for read-write but they strongly recommend against it.  You see this filesystem comes from a proprietary closed source system so you have to do a lot of guess work for NTFS.

As far as Windows. Win3.1 can only read FAT16, Win95-WinME can only read FAT16/FAT32. WinNT can read FAT16/NTFS, Win2k-WinXP can read FAT16/FAT32/NTFS.

And here is a list of partition types you can set with "fdisk" in Linux:

Code: [Select]

The columns above may show up a little out of alignment but you get the idea.  Guess how many Windows recognizes?

[ February 11, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[Calum]

Okay, Back again.
Still not got Linux yet, i'm waiting for my sister to post me my RedHat7.0 and Turbolinux6.1 CDs. She has borrowed Mandrake 8.0 (but not having much luck) so she doesn't need my CDs.
I have a bunch of CD burning to do. 6 Gigs of MP3s to get off the hard drive. Once that's over with, the HD gets a total format, and i'll set up a dual or triple boot scenario.

As we know, i'm running WinME on a laptop with unusual hardware. I wrote to the people who assembled it (PC Club Australia) and they have not bothered to get back to me. Nice.
Now, let's just say for hypotheticals' sake that i had installed Windows 2000 in order to get a dual windows boot going on to start off with. (the motivation for this is to have a "stable as possible" windows installation and a "who gives a shit" installation, this will mean i can burn the mp3 cds from the "safe" one with little fear of the whole thing falling on its arse.)
Well, i installed win2000 on a FAT32 partition, of about 1.7 gigs, then when i had a problem, i reinstalled it on NTFS, not to fix the problem, but just because i had changed my mind re: fat32/ntfs, and hoped said problem would sort itself out in the process. No luck.
The problem is this:
when you set up win2000, the only user that exists so far is "Administrator". The first thing you do when you have installed windows is check EVERY setting in the Control Panels. When you log on as "Administrator" in win2000, you CAN'T GET IN TO THE CONTROL PANELS!
A message comes up saying you aren't authorised to use that folder, drive or partition (it doesn't even know which it is!). You can open control panel up, but you can't get inside any of the actual control panels if you know what i mean. What's the point? log on as root, and you can't even change any settings! Useless.
So what's the answer? am i doomed? will i have to use winNT4 instead? remember i will be installing linux in the next few weeks or months, but i know from doing it before that, when i do, i will be coming back here with a handful of cul de sacs i have come up against. It'll be redhat7.0 i try first, unless anybody can tell me why i should use turbolinux instead, then when i can finally order a cd of maybe Mandrake 8.1 or 8.2 if it's out by then, i might switch to that, again unless anybody has any better ideas of what distro to use for a pernicketty windowsME specific laptop...
Thanks a lot in advance, again...

[Calum]

Well, my linuxing friend from New Zealand had a poke around for 15 mins on my laptop last night. He hasn't used windows for a year, and he was still regediting and dosprompting away like nobody's business.
I gather his laptop runs his own compilation of linuxfromscratch at a command line with no gui at all.
Anyway, he managed to open up the control panels from a dos box, using the command strings from the registry, i changed the settings to what i wanted them to be and rebooted. No change.
Useless.
Well, i have  little patience for this NT rubbish, i had higher hopes. I reckon it'll have to be deleted and the 1.7 gigs saved for something useful.
This means only one windows install on my laptop (one too many) but the problem is, if i can't get win2000 to work, and i can't get win98 to work, and winME works perfectly, then by hell, this laptop really is in a proprietary snit and i am not looking forward to trying to make linux work on it, when i still don't know what bits are inside.
Thanks PC Club Australia...

[Calum]

Okay!
well
win2000 has been uninstalled for being useless, red hat 7.0 has been installed in it's place. it has 2.2 as its kernel.
X will only display a blank screen though, as i do not have the right config file for my SiS630 graphics card/lcd screen. any ideas how to get it all up and going? i amsearching google now for another person who has figured out the solution...
any help gratefully received!
thanks in advance...

[lu666s]

General help, not sure tht the driver is supported.
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Laptop-HOWTO-1.html
http://mobilix.org/graphic_linux.html

[voidmain]

That's another reason I suggested going with RedHat 7.2 over 7.0.  Although I can't say for sure that it will work with your laptop, it has a more recent version of X windows (4+) and probably a better chance of working on odd laptop displays.  Not to mention running the 2.4 series kernel over 2.2.  Again, I won't say that 7.2 will for sure work on your system, and I won't say for sure that a little config tweaking on 7.0 won't make it work.  For the older X (3.x) I always had good luck with "xconfigurator" for setting up my XF86Config file (not always on the first try though).

[Calum]

well, i am a total linux newbie, so the following words will be painfully boring i am sure, but my linuxing friend helped me get round the graphics card problem and IT WORKS!!!!!    HOORAY!
Apparently it's using the frame buffer in order to get the X Server to work... (?)
this was seemingly quite easy to set up using a little thing that i downloaded from the net, as several people had the same problem.Apparently SuSE and DebIan support the SiS630 chipset as standard, and maybe newer releases of other things do too.
It works!!!
I also have a CD of linux applications which all look a bit useless compared with the programs that came with red hat anyway, but it seems this CD also contains the 2.4 kernel. Of course this is like a red rag to a bull, as soon as i feel confident enough, i will be shoehorning the newer kernel into my new WORKING!! linux system.
Now X works, all the desktops work, and i can get an "inside out" feel for this OS. I reckon it is easier for me to learn the command line stuff from a desktop>console environment, just because of the way my brain works! It helps that said mate of mine doesn't run any desktops, so whenever i ask him a question, he'll tell me how to do it in a console, and later i figure out the graphical way to do it. This is good grounding as you can see what's going on first time, so that you know what is happening under the hood when you use the GUI to do it later...
Anyway, this is turning into a review of Linux! but all i wanted to say was... IT WORKS!!! IT WORKS!!!!      

[voidmain]

Congrats!  Although I normally wouldn't want to hear a review until someone has seriously used *NIX for at least 6 months, it will be interesting to hear.  The reason I say that is because it will take some time with a serious effort toward learning it that the light bulbs will start popping on and you will begin to see the power of *NIX and how difficult/limited Win* actually is.  When going back to Win* (if you go back) you will find that you will be easily frustrated that you can't do certain things that you become accustomed to in *NIX.

[Calum]

i believe it!