I had winxp home installed on it.
Got a new HD and went with vista.
Then I shrank the vista install to install debian.
Debian worked great, but I couldn't get vista to work.
I get vista to work again and I can't log in cause it needs to activate.
I go to install winxp pro over the vista... gets 1/2 installed and fails on an access violation into the vista installation.

now, I can't get to vista... and I can't get back to linux... and I can't get to xp. I fucked up. Worst thing is that I have no clue what is on the vista partition.

throw a live linux cd in so you can at least see whats on it. i know ive heard something about the winxp boot loader can't load Vista but the Vista bootloader can load XP. Pretty sure theres a trick to get the Vista bootloader to load Linux too.

also: http://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

I once fixed a hard drive that had a completely missing filesystem using UBCD. I knew it was NTFS but everything saw it as an unknown partition type. Normally you're fucked and have to format and lose everything but UBCD was somehow able to rebuild the entire partition table from scratch and recover every bit.


But UBCD also has a way to write a custom MBR that can load anything.

that would rule. I don't have vista that I can install anymore.

I'm downloading ubuntu right now and I'm going to install it over the debian install since I've been doing everything over a share on my windows 7 machine.
If I want to install winxp pro and linux, which should I install first?

probably windows first because last i checked windows cant even recognize a Linux filesystem. If you install windows and then linux and then just edit GRUB to add a second boot option to your windows partition you should be fine. But check out the custom bootloaders you can do with UBCD, i think thatll make it easier so you dont have to worry which you install first.

grub finds windows just fine.
I just wish I knew how to set it up to boot windows primarily.

I'm yanking off all my files from the vista partition.

ive never actually gotten dual boot to ever work. i've only tried it once though. I had winxp pro installed and partitioned the drive and installed Mandrake. It worked fine booting into Linux. It gave the option of either manrake or windows....but if i picked windows it was like windows wrote over whatever linux had done and the next time i restarted it would just go right to windows and wouldnt let me choose.

if this were true, you wouldn't be able to share files between Windows and Linux, which you can

Well yeah, but if you're dualbooting can the windows side see the linux drive?

if the linux side is ntfs or fat32 yes.

mandrake.
ahahahahahaha

lol i know right? This must have been 6 years ago.

when you're dualbooting, one side shouldn't see the other, no matter what OS's you're using

I dualbooted a machine at my work on Win2K and WinXP just to not lose files from 2K, and neither OS knows the other is there (in theory)

what i meant was one OS doesn't know the other exists, but can still see the files creating on the other side.....does that make sense?

speaking of laptops.......I just got a new one and I have a question on whether this is normal or not.......I had 206 gigs after I put everything on my computer that I needed. I havent added anything to it since and clear cache/cookies/temp files on a regualr basis.

Well, a day after it went down to 200 gigs. then the next day I look its down to 196. I look the next day, its still at 196 but then I look a few minutes later its at 193. anyway , it is now down to 186. What is going on here? I know the computer is doing updates and all that jazz but I lost 20 gigs and it looks like its just going to keep going down.

do you defrag? do you run scans for malware (Malware Bytes, Ad-Aware, Spybot - Search and Destroy, CCleaner, SUPERAntiSpyware - all free, btw)?

running a spyware/virus check now

some programs do weird things too. look in the temp files.

temp folders I mean..

ok, xp pro was a major failure. I'm installing the winxp home sp2 that came with the computer now. Also, my ubuntu download crapped out.

do you have any norton products installed by any chance? I was working on a fairly old computer at work that had a 40GB hard drive.....23GB of which was old norton virus updates. Each update is something like 50MB, but there was years and years worth sitting there.

Oh and Rusty, i get what youre saying. I didn't know that about dualbooting that neither OS could see the drive from the other. But yeah obviously if you have a file you made in Linux and transfer it to Windows it'll work. I just sort of assumed that each OS would be able to mount the other OS's partition.

also.....you can install linux on an NTFS filesystem? I guess im behind when it comes to linux since i only mess with it every few years until i get frustrated. I've always used EXT3 or whatever it is.

I don't remember much Linux even though I took classes on it about 6 months ago, but I seem to remember that Linux installs on NTFS....I could be wrong though

oh, how I miss Ubuntu

rusty, you are wrong.
linux installs on ext3, but can read tons of different filesystems.
NTFS, the NT stands for the windows NT product.

BOTH systems can see any of the partitions of the other and if the OS understands the FS of that other partition, then you can access it.
Windows doesn't natively understand ext3, but linux natively understands and can mount NTFS. There are (pay for) drivers that you can load in windows to understand ext3 just like there were drivers in windows 98 to read NTFS cause it only understood fat32.

actually rev linux does not natively understand ntfs thats a package that ships with some version only

in fact i remember in fedora 3 i had to install this bs

your version must have been fucked cause it was installed with the basic install for fc2 when I installed it. Same with RHE3, fc5, all the debians and ubuntus I've installed and knoppix.

oh i thought it was rev that said linux installed on ntfs. i just know that i had major issues trying to use knoppix to recover data from a corrupted windows xp installation. this was a few years ago and im sure ntfs support has improved but it was like pulling teeth to get knoppix to mount the drive and then it told me that it couldnt write to an ntfs partition at all.

rev it might have been pre fedora 3 i forget

you can install linux on ntfs just sux

i remember when the first talks of Vista were starting (when it was still codename Longhorn) i saw that they were going to write a new filesystem called winfs or something and stop using ntfs. Looks like they just gave up on it and stuck with ntfs. And now with Windows 7 i havnt seen anything about a new filesystem. It just seems to me that the rules of NTFS dont really apply now that were getting into 2TB hard drives and high speed SATA that wasnt even a dream 10 years ago when NTFS was on the drawing board.

NTFS on vista and win 7 goes over 2TB.

that's why I wanted vista on my little laptop.

yeah i knew that but eventually theyre going to have to scrap NTFS and write a new filesystem that works better on larger drives. Faster indexing i think is going to be key as we start to move to 4TB and then jump to 16TB and 32TB hard drives. Just watching how quickly solid state drives are going up in size i'll bet that we're going to be seeing really huge hard drives within just a few years.

4TB HD's won't be out till 2012.
SSD'a were suppose to cross prices with HDs in 2010, but I doubt that will be happening since seagate and wd aren't making ssd's right now.

oh and win 7 uses NTFS, but doesn't have the 2TB limit. there is another name for the NTFS that 7 and vista uses. When I reformat my drobo to 16TB in a couple weeks I'll tell you what it is.

"the maximum partition size on NTFS is of 16 TB"

winxp uses an old scsi spec so usb drives are limited to 2TB. not so on vista and win7

like I said, I don't remember much about Linux, so I was wrong....I really didn't like Fedora and haven't used anything else

my computer is fine..it was just all the system restores that was taking all the space up : )

yep, that will happen hence apple's timemachine.


I'm running ubuntu and win home on this lappy just fine now. I also have carina's laptop that is exactly like this one that I'm going to load freeNAS or something on.

ALEX! how do you get the cube working in ubuntu??