You are right about why it won't partition; it has lots of files at the end of the disk, according to the defrag detail. I remembered that Norton speed disk orders things differently, so I tried that. That organized the disk so that thousands of red flagged clusters are now at the end of the disk. And a subsequent defrag won't touch them. So I suppose I am into something like you are talking about below. I am not competent enough to do the whole shooting match you suggest, so I will evaluate other options. If I get pissed enough, I'll just wipe the disk clean and put windows where it belongs. If any other idea comes to mind, or if anyone else has had any luck doing this in a more simplified way, I would appreciate knowing about it. Thanks.
On Wednesday 26 December 2001 04:26 am, you wrote: > Charles Jennings wrote: > >This ones got me baffled. I am trying to install Mandrake 8.1 on my wifes > >computer. It's a pentium with a 10 gig hard drive running win98. I try to > >install in the expert mode and resize it. I get the massage that it can't > > be resized. After scandisk and defrag, and looking into fdisk, there is > > 6.1 gig free but the whole disk is active for win. I don't know why > > diskdrake won't resize it. I am not competent to use fdisk (never done it > > and I don't want to erase the wife's hard drive by error). Any > > suggestions on what might be the cause and the solution? > >Thanks. > > This one means that a windows program has placed a non-relocatable > cluster near the end of the disk or that you are using the NTFS > filesystem which we do not write-enable in the install kernel. > > SInce you are running 98 which does not support NTFS, do the disk defrag > and scroll down on the full display--near the bottom you will find one > or more red-marked clusters. > > The solution is non-trivial, Either remove programs one by one and > defrag and try linux after each such removal or install linux on another > large disk with a grub boot, copy all of your windows data over (but not > your installed programs), then scrub windows and go back to fdisk and > set up windows on a smaller primary partition, reinstalling software > then set up linux again on the primary master drive and mount the second > drive to restore the data you wanted to back up. I have done this in > another situation--a rather full 10G disk where Win98 was installed and > the user attempted an XP upgrade, losing mouse and keyboard (both > Microsoft brand hardware products, BTW) in the process. I could not > shrink the winpartition enough to make room for the 2.2G of data he > wanted to rescue, so I used a second disk and a linux install on it, > then scrubbed the first disk after copyiong over the info he wanted. > The clean install of XP still could not see his mouse or keyboard, so > he is running 98 and Mandrake dual boot these days, and he seems very > grateful that linux was able to save his data from an otherwise trashed > situation. > > Civileme > > >------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > > >Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? > >Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
