My Computer :|

[JHanson90]

What Happened:
I downloaded the boot.iso file from ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/current/ at http://www.suse.com/. So I used it, and got to the part where it was detecting my partition setup. One partition, C:, used by Windows XP's NTFS; SUSE LINUX could not do anything with that except delete the whole thing. Couldn't do that, so I quit the setup and ran PartitionMagic to try and make a new partition for Linux. So I restarted the computer, with PM's task to be to resize the C: partition. The partitioning process reached 30% completion. It stopped there, even after I waited a night sleep's eight hours. It was still at 30% in the morning. There was nothing I could do; I had to restart the computer. So now when I boot it, it shows the Windows screen, then goes to an error in DOS telling me that it wasn't able to start up Windows. My options were to start it up again in Safe Mode, Safe Mode with Networking, some other Safe mode thing, Windows with all its old configurations, and start up normal Windows. None of them worked: trying them just repeated the same loop back to that same error screen. So my computer doesn't work.

What went wrong?

What do I do?



My current plan is, when I get home from tech club, get a new hard drive, put it in my computer, and run the Linux install from that boot disc, only using Linux from now on. I would use Mac but it's too expensive at the moment. Is this a good idea? Any suggestions?

[Dan]

Owch, i think you may have to format that drive if u messed up the partion tables. What i whould do is start with a new drive (or a formated one) and then partion it in to 3. One for windows, one for windows swap, one for linux. then install windows on the windows one, and then chage the setings so the page file is on the windows swap partion and takes up almost the hole thing. Then install linux, suse should then partion the free partion in 2, one with all but 1gb of the space of that partion and the other whould be the 1gb. The 1gb is for the linux swap.

It is import to install windows 1st, and to make shure you get the boot setings right when u install suse or it will be hard to get in to ether OS.

[rdrake]

Testdisk has saved my computer from partition and boot problems countless times. Put "testdisk.exe" and "CWSDPMI.EXE" on a DOS boot disk, pop it in, then type in "testdisk" to use it.

[Mazer]

Here's the way I see it:
Microsoft invented the NTFS because they wanted to be special (OK, maybe there's a good reason, but just play along).
Linux, and the rest of the world, tends to stick with normal things like FAT32 and VFAT and so on. Or whatever.
The problem is that Linux cannot access your NTFS partition. Though, there is a solution. I remember I tried something like it a while back (or tried to try). It's hard to explain, but if you go on IRC you can try bugging people on a Linux channel (in as polite a way as possible) about how you can access your NTFS partition from Linux, they might give you the URL to a site about it.

What I just said may make very little sense, and if that's the case, I'm sorry. I don't quite understand it myself (I never actually got it to work because of complications with installing certain tools and my dysfunctional default cdrom drive).

So here's another solution:
Grab a copy of Knoppix, or another live bootable distribution of Linux. This should (Knoppix for sure) be able to access your NTFS partition, allowing you to retrieve and back up all of your files.

[Genesis]

Coutsos wrote:

The problem is that Linux cannot access your NTFS partition.

Suse can. I can access all of my Windows files when I'm on Linux.

[Mazer]

Shit, did I just read the post wrong? That's one heck of a waste of time...

[Dan]

Genesis wrote:

Coutsos wrote:

The problem is that Linux cannot access your NTFS partition.

Suse can. I can access all of my Windows files when I'm on Linux.

But can it write to them? When i first put suse on my comp i could see and read all the files on the windows side but i could not write to them. easy fix tho, just use a fat32 system for windows.

[wtd]

One note: while Windows XP might require a NTFS partition for the system, I don't think there's anything stopping you from mapping My Documents to a FAT32 partition which both Windows and Linux can read from and write to.

[Dan]

wtd wrote:

One note: while Windows XP might require a NTFS partition for the system, I don't think there's anything stopping you from mapping My Documents to a FAT32 partition which both Windows and Linux can read from and write to.

Nope it dose not require a NTFS partition, i got mine totaly on a FAT32 one...

[Genesis]

Hacker Dan wrote:

But can it write to them?

Yeah I'm pretty sure it can. (Suse anyways.) I've copied files from my Linux partition to my NTFS Windows one.

(I'll check that again though, maybe I'm just imagining things.)


Oh, and JHanson90, what kind of computer are you installing this on? I had a similar problem while trying to install Suse on a PII a couple weeks ago. (I think that might have been in part due to the slow CD-ROM though.)

[rizzix]

yes u can but u need to use the 2.6.x kernel and u'd have to recompile it with NTFS write-enable feature ON.. it is disabled by default in SuSE cuz the feature is currently marked as EXPERIMENTAL.

[Brightguy]

What's the best way to spilt up your main partition into several smaller ones?

[rizzix]

partition magic

[shorthair]

Windows owns rights to NTFS , and they refuse to release drviers for it , so in hte end its alwayts gonna be experimental , you can really mess up a hard drive reading and writing to it under linux ,

[Andy]

hmmm fat32 is alot slower than NTFS tho...