[Novalug] Laptop question again.

[Pete Nuwayser]

On 3/31/07, Subba Rao <castellan2004-novalug at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> I went to Best Buy today to buy a laptop.  There were quite a few that I
> liked.  There was a HP 17" monitor with dual disk (perfect for Vista + Linux
> setup) that I liked.  However the saleman mentioned that there is no Vista
> CD to reinstall Vista.  I mentioned about my goal to use VIsta + Linux on
> the laptop.  The salesman kept repeating that Microsoft does not give out
> Vista CD anymore (to beat piracy).  The only way to restore the system is to
> backup the system  and reinstall it.  Is this true?  Is this a Best Buy
> setup or a typical new Vista systems setup?
>
> Any experiences with Vista (without CD) to install along with Linux?

Only one brief experience to share from a couple of weeks ago:
customer had a ThinkPad X41 Tablet with Vista Tablet PC edition
pre-installed, and he wanted to dual-boot with SUSE Linux Enterprise
Desktop 10 SP1 beta6.  First, the version of ntfsresize that ships
with SLED10 SP1b6 can't handle the version of NTFS that comes with
Vista.  I found the latest ntfsresize (1.13.something) on the latest
KNOPPIX release (5.1 I think). [1]

Second, it didn't work anyway; it shrunk the volume and did the
mandatory chkdsk at startup, but then the initial Vista boot (after
starting the OS but before giving you any logon options) hung for
about 15 minutes.  The customer elected to blow away Vista completely,
so we never did any serious troubleshooting.

I have a SLED/Vista dual-boot setup on my
get-around-to-it-in-the-coming-month-or-so todo list


[1] see www.linux-ntfs.org and www.knoppix.com


-- 
/pete nuwayser/
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