Thinkpad Saga Continues

[Sean McMahon]

Glad to hear you got it working Beth!  Just out of curiosity, shouldn't the 
particianing software for your linux system have found your Windows partician 
and created a new partician for linux?  I'm curious because I, one day, want to 
have a duel-boot system and thought from the docs I read that you could just 
have the linux particianer resize the particians for you so Bill and the penguin 
could live happily?
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Beth Hatch" <bhatch200 at comcast.net>
To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca>
Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 8:46 AM
Subject: Thinkpad Saga Continues


>
>
> Hi everyone,  Because so many of you kindly posted on this list and
> privately to me concerning getting Linux on my Thinkpad, I figured I
> would update you all on what has happened in case it saves some of you
> the trouble and annoyance I have been experiencing lately.<smile>  I'm
> sure those of you more knowledgeable than myself on this may have been
> able to resolve it better and quicker, but I'm still learning, as you
> will soon see.<smile>
>
>
>
>    My machine came with a 120 gigabyte hard drive with a 30 gigabyte
> rescue partition containing the computer's recovery files, the other
> partition was taken up by Windows XP and various Thinkpad and Windows
> applications.
>
>    First, I tried to hook up the docking station and install Fedora
> using the docking station's serial port to have Speakup talk for me.
> Speakup could not be found when I specified my Dectalk express as the
> synthesizer, whether I specified a tty port by naming it specifically as
> suggested by Janina or by having Speakup find it without specifying the
> tty port.  Consequently, in order to do my class assignments, I decided
> to have my instructor assist me in installing Fedora and together we
> got Gnome and Orca up and running.
>
>    When we tried to install Windows XP to set up the dual boot system,
> my XP disk kept hanging at the hardware inspection portion of the
> installation.  Believe me, if I didn't need this laptop for school which
> requires Windows and Linux, I would just keep a Linux system!!<smile>
> Lenovo tech support said on its web site to turn off the dual core
> processor support in the bios temporarily to allow Windows XP to install
> properly.  I had a friend assist me and we turned off the dual core as
> directed.  We still couldn't install XP, same problem, XP hanging at the
> hardware inspection process.
>
>    Just for grins, a fellow geek  friend who agreed to help me disabled
> just about everything in the bios, just to get XP running, no go with
> that either, same problem.  She tried a Windows 2000 disk, just to see
> if she could see my Linux partition, and voila! Windows 2000 at least
> figured out that Linux lived on my system and found the rescue
> partition.  She nuked those partitions for me, and we are starting from
> scratch!!  It seems that Linux and grub will see my Windows partition if
> I install Windows *before* Windows, but Windows XP gets cranky and won't
> see my Linux partition if I install Linux first and then try to install
> Windows afterwards.  I realize that this sounds strange, so let me
> clarify.  Since there were only two partitions, I had to break the
> larger one to install Linux and the one for the rescue partition wasn't
> big enough for Fedora with all of the other applications and data in the
> rescue partition.  I didn't have access to something like partition
> magic to rebuild the partitions, so we had to take this crazy route
> instead.  This appears to be what happens at school with all of the dual
> boot systems where XP and Fedora 6 are involved, Windows seems to be
> happy being installed first, then Linux and grub set up the dual boot
> properly.  XP is now on my machine, and I am going to try again to
> install Linux.
>
>    Word to the wise, if you have a Thinkpad, the serial port appears to
> be disabled by default in the bios.  We turned it on, and now I'm going
> to try
> again and see how it goes.  I'll keep you posted, unfortunately this
> thing isn't over yet.<smile>
>
> Thanks for listening,
>
> Beth
>
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