PuppyLinux --> Windows XP: Parition Help!

[Ian]

Have you tried asking HP for help with this issue.

[Guest]

Yes, and they keep on putting me on hold and junk, then they say that because im out of warentee they basicly refuse to help me. Either that or beat around the bush trying me to buy useless junk that "might" fix it.

[Ian]

Do you have a licence to use WindowsXP, you should look into the licencing issues here as if you bought your machine with XP preinstalled I don't think there is a warranty 'time line' on XP, just the usage of it.

What happens if the hard drive dies and you have to replace it? do you have to buy another licence for XP.

Go back to your vendor and ask them what the story is concerning these issues.

[danleff]

OK, try this HP article.

The error message is noted when there is more than one partition on the hard drive. The error is mentioned here.

[Guest]

I just tried that.. And it kept on giving me the SAME message.
Now when I look at my partitions, for some reason I have a Windows95 FAT32 PARTITION? o_0;

*cries* You guy's keep on giving me false hope. =P

[Guest]

If possible, install a formatted hard drive. The new hard drive must be as large or larger than the replaced hard drive.

WAIT WAIT, WTF! IS THIS TRUE!? I REPLACED MY HD WITH AN OLDER ONE, THAT HAS LESS SPACE!!

[Guest]

Type FDISK at the prompt and press Enter.
(it says to do that from the system recovery disk, but it jumps over that screen, is there anyway I can get FDISK from a floppy or something?)

[Guest]

*** It jumps over that first menu and goes straight to "Completing Recovery Parititon" so I can't select anything.

(Note: Sorry about so many posts.)

[Bruce B]

cfdisk will delete the FAT32 - highlight it - delete - write - bye bye hda1

If you want to use MICROSOFT FDISK - I think it is on your rescue CD - something like selecting advanced, drop to DOS or whatever.

It doesn't matter which software you delete the partition with as far as I know.

[Guest]

Whenever I use my system recovery disks, it never asks me for any options, it just jumps all the way too "Finishing Preparation" and then I get the error.

[Ian]

Did you say you replaced the hard drive with a smaller one, this could cause problems as the image might be looking for the same size hard drive.

Also XP creates a partition in the middle of the partition to use as a backup for it's system restore points so if this is missing the image might not be able to be installed.

You need to know what method HP used when they created this setup i.e.
What partitions, hidden ones included, that they use and the sizes of them.

The problems you are having are a good example of a good idea gone wrong.

[danleff]

Yes, the recovery image looks/needs hard drive space the same size or larger than the original hard disk. Think of it as a ghost image.

For the HP disk, this size is the hidden recovery partition plus the XP installation.

Another example is if you used partimage to save an image of your favorite Linux distro. It needs to be restored to a like size or larger partition.

[Guest]

Ok. I think I get it.
But the weird thing is, it worked fine with puppylinux, Must not have never gotten to that point where I needed that "space" huh?

I guess im going to try to call HP support again and ask them how I can setup this up.