porting linux on a wintel machine

[gaf at blu.org (Jerry Feldman)]

I have never seen this happen if the partitions are properly resized. 
Before resizing partitions, it is advisable to defrag them, but in my 
experience Partition Magic 5.0 takes care of it.  It is possible that 
System Commander failed to properly defrag.

One comment is boot managers.  The Linux Loader, Lilo is sufficient to use 
as a multi-boot manager, and IMHO preferable. However, System Commander 
Deluxe and Boot Magic are excellent multi-boot managers.  I personally 
dislike System Commander, but it is preferred for dual booting, especially 
Windows 2000. One problem especially with Windows 95 is that there are 
files, msdos.sys and io.sys that should never be moved. However, the 
windows sys command should fix that. I routinely use tar to backup my 
Windows partitions. When my 8.6GB drive was failing, I used tar to back it 
up, then restored it to another drive. All I needed to do was to run the 
sys command from a standalone windows rescue disk, and my Windows95 can 
boot successfully (or it did a month or so ago).

Ken Gosier wrote:

> One experience of mine, which may or may not be something
> to worry about:
> 
> I originally bought a machine with Win95 pre-loaded, and
> then used System Commander to downsize its partition to
> half the disk. However, after this, Win95 refused to start
> properly. (An infinite string of 'Illegal Operation''s
> immediately after the Windows background came up.)
> 
> So, I found out, after some time on various tech support
> lines, that this was happening b/c pre-installed versions
> of Win95 HAD to have the whole hard drive to themselves.
> 
> I got lucky, the lady at the store gave me a shrink-wrapped
> copy of Win98 to install. But in the general case, I
> wouldn't know exactly how to resolve this problem--
-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org


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