Mailing List os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com Archived Message #1581

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> Jeffrey Race wrote:
> PS what bloat can I delete from the XP partition?   How should I resize
> the XP partition?   I usually create D E F G as FAT partitions and H I J
> for OS/2, installing the OS on H.   Last time I tried this I ran into some
> nightmare of the 1024 cylinder problem, never got solved.
> I have DFSee and Partition Magic CDs.

Although not exactly Oranges to Oranges, I have installed Convenience Pak 2 (with updated fix paks, etc) onto a T42. Had problems using shrinking the NTFS XP partition using dfsee in that XP would never boot after that. I had previously used Partition Magic to shrink a virgin T23's C drive and that went without a hitch. One difference was that on the T42 was that XP had been booted and run a few times whereas the T23 was a completely new un-executed factory image... which I don't believe is NTFS as initially shipped from the factory, but really FAT32. Anyway I tried restoring XP several times and various other shrinking attempts but ended up using OS/2's LVM to complete wipe the disk and repartition as I wanted as XP also wouldn't shrink down as far as I wanted due to some "non relocateable files" (and also it wouldn't boot away after shrinking to various attempted sizes ... anyway, I did do various partition restores in between and booting reverified until after trying again and again I finally gave up and wiped it from the machine.) So, after deleting all the partitions and layout out the partitions/volumes as I like, and installing OS/2's boot manager, I had no problem re-installing a new "off the shelf" copy of XP applying all the driver updates from the ThinkPad site and M$, and defined a couple of logical volumes of bootable OS/2. as FYI, my current LVM Query output is:
Disk Size (MB) Free Space: Total Largest
[ D1 ] 76316 0 0
Disk Partition Size (MB) Type Status Logical Volume
WinXP 15001 Primary In use WinXP
[ BOOT MANAGER ] 7 Primary In use
Boot 391 Primary Available
Warp C 6002 Logical In use Warp C
Extra E 1506 Logical In use Extra
Data D 2000 Logical In use Data
Develop 2000 Logical In use Develop
Warp G 6002 Logical In use Warp G
Misc H 1002 Logical In use Misc H
Misc L 23002 Logical In use Misc L
Spare 19392 Logical In use Spare

The little "Boot" primary I reserved for playing with Linux at some time in the future again. Drive D and E are FAT16 for hassle free data exchange although I very seldom boot the XP partition, C,F,G are HPFS while H,L, and "spare" are JFS ( At the moment, I backup the system to "spare" (using my BackEmUp program) cutting CD's as I need to for space management). The WinXP primary "C:" (NTFS) is defined within LVM as the W: volume to OS/2 although I don't actively address it from OS/2. I like to keep Winders and OS/2 from intersecting at too many places. I have no problem at all booting OS/2 from Logical C or Logical G which is way way way down the disk. I kept WinXP as Primary #1 as it is fussy about partition numbers and if I rearrange the disk again, I didn't want to have to deal with that. I stuck BM and the reserved tiny "Boot" primary next on the disk just to tuck them away someplace down "out of the way", I could, for example, without too much pain, somewhat dynamically reallocate some space from C to E or vica versa, or G to H, etc... or put a Linux distro on "spare" or H without major disruptions.

If I were to do it again, I might consider making my HPFS Boot drives a little smaller as CHKDSK takes a while on those while booting. I'd then install some of the basic apps such as Firefox, Acrobat, Virtual PC, Odin, etc.... on a different volume. (Virtual PC containers are on L: as I think about going to L when having to run a Windoze session... I haven't booted the WinXP primary for many many months as the WinXP VPC machine does all I need it to do for me. Also have a Red Hat VM too under VPC so may never really install a native bootable version) Thinking of the future, I also might also should have made each partition a unique size so as to make it easier to double check against linux device assignments. When I did have Linux set up on an earlier machine, I had BM boot to Lilo thus keeping the MBR "sane" in my mind. Sure it "wastes" a primary, but I don't find too many real needs for primaries.

Anyway, no problem using the official T42 drivers.. video, sound (Not Uniaudio), USB, hard wired 1000 ethernet, etc and (via genmac) the wireless.

FWIW, your mileage may vary...
Al H

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