[nycbug-talk] How NOT to setup a laptop with FreeBSD. :-(

[Francisco Reyes]

Got a Compaq Presario V2410 laptop yesterday.
Spent most of the day trying to resize the single partition.
Tried Knopix, tried SystemCD (some linux distro recovery disk)... and not 
long ago was desperate enough to order Partition Manager version 7

In one of the many tries with Knopix I must have damaged the partition and 
now PM7 can't do it's trick.. I decided to go for broke.. and redo the 
"system recovery disks".

It turns out that these recovery disks actually have a "normal" XP setup 
where I was able to delete the existing partition and make a new one.

I should have simply done that from the beginning. Didn't do it, because I 
expected the recovery disks were going to be specialized.. like once I had a 
Sony VIAO and the recovery disks gave me 0 options.. they just ran straight 
through. 


My advice for would be laptop users with multi-boot need... try the recovery 
disks.. if they allow you to specify size of partition that is the way to 
go... before you start working on the machine.

I would recommend against Knoppix/qtparted. It froze several times and 
eventually ended up damaging the partition info. Perhaps for desktops it 
would work better...

Second part of this advice... don't try partition work with 
relatives/wife/kids around which will interrupt you every 10 to 20 
minutes... and turn a couple of hours work into a whole day affair due to 
constant distractions, interruptions and trips to grocery store to buy 
goodies for Christmas dinner. :-)