Some distros are mean

[varaonaid]

Husse, no offense taken! I was trying to explain what goes on with the partitions in the simplest of terms to make it easy to understand. I'm very glad that you clarified what I failed to state correctly. I want it to be both easy to understand and the right information!

Sorry, I didn't do a better job of explaining. Again, I'm still a newbie but I want to be able to help others in the few areas in which I've succeeded so far as *so* many other have helped me!

[Ignanik]

Ok I may be new here but ...

@Husse dude I my self am quite a distro wanderer and from my experience most linux distros that use grub do the same thing as PCLinuxOS if not told otherwise , there is only a handfull that will recognize other linux installs and add them to the menu ... You can still boot your Mint All you need is to copy all files from the linux mint /boot folder to the PCLinuxOS boot folder and then add an entry in the grub menu , actualy simple if done with the PClinuxOS control center
Read this , it will help (It helped me alot , I now have 6 different distros and 3 win installs on a box at work and I`m using all of them )
http://www.justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=143973

As for the win2k problem ... every thing other then SP4 has to be on a primary partition and has to be formated by the default util or partition magic (nothing else that I have tryed worked ,I Had the same problem once ) and yes it only see`s 4 primary partitions

Now installing casandra

[Husse]

Welcome to Mint Ignanik
With a nick like that I thought you would be an eskimo
The installers aren't that nice, no.....
But that was my first experience outside the Debian world, and Debian + Ubuntu never destroyed grub. And in my frustration (probably) I did not find a way to do just what you suggested, other than with the live CD - still learning even if I'm a support guy here

[Boo]

oh did i have some fun last night!

And once again DEFT saved the day. (testdisk is fantastic.)

I have been spoilt with mint and the (x|k)ubuntu installers.

first i cleared off all the non windows partitions on my laptop.
installed mint3, yay, found windows and i setup wpa2 wifi (windows would not even do this) YAY.

installed fedora 7, installer found windows, manually added mint partition but once installed i found that it assumed the mint partition was windows. and no wpa2.

Installed PCLOS 2007, only found windows and thought 2nd nfts was another widows, haha, once installed i found that the partition created for it was a primary inside an extended. haha good work pclos, and no wpa2.

ran some live distro's: muisix, 64studio, and finally DEFT to fix up the mess left by pclos.

so maybe tonight a reorder of OS's installs and a downgrade of wifi security.

[Husse]

Very close to this then yesterday?

Now where was i going? Oh yes, crazy!

and

created for it was a primary inside an extended

That's not even possible
So, good job

[Ignanik]

By the way just for the The record ... Im not an eskimo i`m macedonian (not a former russian republic and not even close to russia for the uninformed , see google earth to find it above greece ) , the nick is a fusion of my name and my last name ... Ignatovski Nikola hence ignanik

Thanks for the welcome

You know , I had a gnome fobia and a debian based distro - fobia before mint Casandra , created by a debian server at my previous job . But this is different. Debian based distros have came a long way I see

I like this ... think its going to become my mainstay distro as soon as I get some things figured

[Husse]

Well Ignanik looks a lot like the eskimo names, and I know were Makedonia is - have you got rid of that FYROM thing yet?

[Wintergreen]

Well...

...I finally did manage to get the dual boot working, and it turns out it was largely me (and not Redmond) who managed to bollux up things with Windows in the first place.

Short story is: I do now have dual boot working, although I'm using two harddisks to get it done, and not just the one. Not perfect. Not quite the way I had intended to set things up. But I don't need perfection really.

----------

It turns out at least some of the issues I was having with the Windows installer (specifically it's sudden frightening insistence on formatting my (working) NTFS partition before it would re-install itself) were probably caused by me in the first place.

<Hangs head. Kicks at imaginary pebbles. Shuffles feet....>

Doh!

---------

I had removed SP4, and in a further desperate attempt to isolate some performance issues, I had renamed some Windows files temporarily in order to disable them...

...and then managed to get myself distracted to the point of forgetfullness while trying to install Windows and then Mint to the new disk. Oops.

No wonder then that the installer decided the disk was corrupted.

---------

As it stands now, I've managed to reinstate everything, at which point the installer agreed it could re-install Win2KP-SP3 WITHOUT needing to format. So things are working once again on the original Windows disk about as well as they ever worked.

Pretty much only gaming/simming though. Nothing more webwise on the Windows side for me--I've moved all of that over into Mint and I'm quite happy having done so.

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[Edit--specifics: I disabled the big, 320GB, new Linux C: drive in BIOS, which left the Windows (installer) seeing only the one, original 120GB, "D:" disk (NTFS format). I then attempted a "repair," but it didn't solve the issues, so I finally executed a full reinstall of Win2KP-SP3. Then AV install, followed by full systemscan and tight firewall install after that. Only then did I finally--physically--re-enable my web connection on the Windows side.

It works. I only use it for gaming/simming though now.

Windows has no idea the bigger (Linux) disk even exists on my system. I download and transfer files TO Windows from the Linux side using the mintDisk automount, but I can't go the other way right now. Suits me just fine.

BTW (and this is for Scorp 123)...since I did finally "punt..."

...I have a "default" install of Mint on the big disk--so my GRUB lies is in the root partition (of that disk).

Windows is happy too in it's own root--it just doesn't realize it actually lives on "D:" instead of "C:."


wintergreen

[Boo]

An update on my laptop capers

PCLOS did and still does run off a primary partition that it created in the extended partition.
but it still works and i can boot windows too.

haha

But when going to install another linux (like mint again) the partitioner sees the disk as un-partitioned.

time to use the big hammer.