Dual-booting on Thinkpad T40

sputnikwhore · n00b Joined: 13 Apr 2004 Posts: 2

I'm a newbie with linux, and I was interested in trying out gentoo on my Thinkpad T40. I ordered the recovery cds from IBM, removed the "hidden" partition that contained all the recovery stuff, formatted my hard disk, and proceeded in installing gentoo. I also created a fat32 partition for winxp, that I had intended to install after gentoofying my system. I've now got gentoo up and running with the help of a friend, and am now faced with the altogether not too pleasant task of wrestling with the winxp installation.

Upon booting with the recovery cd, I realised to my horror that it wasn't going to just install windows, but that it was to format the entire hard disk first.

So now my question is, does anyone know if one could install winxp from a generic winxp installation cd? My concern is that there might be some drivers and stuff that might be vital to the stability of the winxp OS. I guess if I could get the OS up, I would be able to download the drivers and utilities that I might need.

Also, I have read about people having problems with trying to get winxp to install on a partition other than the first one. Does anyone know if there's a way around that? Or am I doomed to wipe out hours of work on gentoo and start all over?

Also, is there a configuration file of sorts I could edit so that my PCM and CD volumes won't be 0 all the time? I'm using ALSA _I think_. Is there a way I could check?

stgreek · Posted: Sat Apr 24, 2004 7:37 pm Post subject:

If you have the original XP (afaik the licence is valid only for the recovery XP) install it with no worries. After you finish just go online and find the T40 matrix from IBM support site, you should find everything you need. As for installing XP you should be fine, but after installing XP remember to load from a live-cd and reinstall grub. You should be fine after that, my 3 thinkpads are.

The major advantage of the recovery cds is that they restore EVERYTHING for you, so you dont even need the MS activation crap. I would personally suggest wiping your hd and starting from XP, but unless you got roadband and patience I don't think it is a solution.

Hope this helps

Stav
_________________
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day that they start making vacuum cleaners

sputnikwhore · n00b Joined: 13 Apr 2004 Posts: 2

Hm okay. So it's only a matter of convenience (on the winxp side) that I "restore" from the recovery CDs? Thanks a lot for the help.

I wish I didn't need winxp. Gentoo rocks. Too bad my printer's a winprinter, and that games generally don't work on linux.

My videocard's a Radeon Mobility 7500, and I've read about people using some other ATI driver for that, should I be doing the same? Mine's just what came with the gentoo distro.

Once again, thanks a lot.

stgreek · Posted: Sun Apr 25, 2004 10:06 pm Post subject:

The only thing I believe recovery discs have that IBM update doesnt is the DVD player. Other than that, you can get everything off the site. As for the videocard, I believe it should use the generic radeon driver in the kernel, since it works fine with it.
_________________
The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day that they start making vacuum cleaners