If it was me, I would download the SUSE live eval CD and boot off of that. It will give you a basic linux system to work with without changing the hard drive. Then use that to copy the files off of the machine to a safe place. I haven't tried this out in a while, but I'm fairly sure you can get networking running right off the CD. Of course this is all assuming the filesystem on the drive isn't pooched. You can also replace "SUSE live eval CD" with any of the single floppy disk distributions. -Marc On Thu, 2001-10-25 at 08:20, Stephen C. Daukas wrote:
This is a story about a ZIP drive, Windows 2000 Pro, and how I think Linux might save the day. So, if you have any good ideas before I go down this path, please let me know!
So, this all started when I tried to install a Zip drive on my wife's laptop (IBM A20m) running Win2k Pro. I was doing this so she could back-up her important files (e.g., Quicken) before we began installing additional software and RedHat Linux. The Zip drive screwed the OS - couldn't boot after the install program said to reboot. Windows!
Next, I tried the various Windows mechanisms for trying to recover and repair the OS. No luck - things got a bit worse (but I won't bore you with the details). I even went so far as to call IBM's support center to see if they had a way of restoring to defaults in a non-destructive way. No Luck. In fact, the support engineer I spoke with told me he tried to get a ZIP drive going on his system running Win2k Pro and after working with Iomega for 3 hours - he gave up.
My wife says its OK to wipe the disk and start over, but I know better (esp. after 16 years of marriage)!
So I had a bright idea (well, an idea anyway). If I had partition magic, I could partition the disk, install Windows 2000 on the new partition, get all of her important files across the network to one of my other PCs, then wipe the disk and start over. BUT, I don't have partition magic (sigh).
Then it hit me - why couldn't I do this with Linux? I want to have Linux and Win2k on the laptop when I'm done anyway, so why not partition the hard drive and then go from there?
So, because I don't want to take any chances with my wife's files, here are some overly cautious questions:
1. During the install of RedHat 7.1, I assume I can re-partition non-destructively and end up with a bad Win2k and a good RedHat when I'm done. Does the RedHat install try to test to see if there is another OS or does it just let me re-partition at will? (Never installed Linux with Windows before.)
2. If I install RedHat 7.1 in the second newly created partition, can I read the files from the 2000 partition? IBM tells me they always go FAT16 with their distributions, but its a large disk so it might be FAT32.
3. If there is a problem with reading the Win2k file system, or if you think going this route is a bad idea, is there a way to run just the partitioning portion of the RedHat install to make a partition that I can install Win2k into?
The goal here is to get files off of the existing Win2k file system and then to wipe the machine and start over...
Thanks in Advance! Steve
Stephen C. Daukas stephen@daukas.com (508) 845-9809 - Home (508) 845-5015 - Fax (508) 612-2149 - Mobile
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