** Reply to message from "Jeffrey Race" <os2-wireless_users@2rosenthals.com> on
Wed, 11 Oct 2006 06:18:50 +0700
> On Tue, 10 Oct 2006 10:28:49 -0600, Will Honea wrote:
>
> > I had to use DFSEE to re-write the MBR with a Windows signature to
> >get it to boot after shrinking it.
>
> Please be frightfully specific as to the exact steps you used to accomplish this
Now that's a load on the aging memory...
OK, laptop was a Toshiba A105-4064. 1800mhz Intel processor, 512 meg ram, DVD
RW, 1gb hard drive. This thing uses an Intel chip set and came with XP-Pro
installed on a single humongous partition. There was also a (very) small
recovery partition, but full re-install CD's were supplied so I ignored any
idea of salvaging that.
After booting and checking out the system by applying all the updates via
internet connection using the built-in wireless (Intel 3945) I was ready to
break it up into some usable partitions. I booted from the DFSEE CDROM which
put me into a FREEDOS environment. I wanted to use the first of the machines
as a test-bed for Linux distros as well as keeping OS/2 running so I decided to
shrink the XP partition as much as I could. I used the DFSEE menu to select the
partition to shrink (very simple and foolproof with only one partition <g>). I
shrank it to the minimum size it would allow - roughly half the total size of
the original partition. Backing up and selecting the entire disc, I then used
the same menu choices ("MODE=Fdisk->MBR updates") to re-write the MBR
maintaining the existing tables then selected the action to write the NT disc
identifier. Rebooted to XP, did some defrag, booted the DFSEE CD again and
shrank the partition a little more. AIR recall, I did NOT re-write the MBR the
second time but XP still booted. I then partitioned the drive the way I wanted
with DFSEE with, in physical order, a small (one cylinder) primary as a
placeholder for Boot Manager, a Linux swap partition, and 4 Linux installable
partitions (I said I was experimenting!), At the end of the freespace, I put
an OS/2 HPFS install drive. Just ahead of that, I put an HPFS data/programs
drive. Next up from the end I put a second partition so that I could experiment
with the eCS 2 beta. The remaining freespace I partitioned as a FAT32
partition for transportation purposes. All except the XP and BM partitions
were created as logical drives. I did run a check on the partition table but
nothing else. When I rebooted to XP, it gave me some snotty comments about
changed hardware and ran chkdsk but it has been running that way ever since.
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