[OT] Booting into IBM Rescue and Recovery

['Forum Post]

Ok guys



Seems like this discussion is more about IBM and their policies than
the actual problem.



You all have a one year waranty and support on the Software that came
with your Laptop. During that period, you can order at any time the CDs
from IBM. (I did that and they even sent them to me after that year was
over for free)



But as i said, back to the problem:



When you install Grub it is a sin to do that into the MBR on a Thinkpad
with Rescue Partition, you all know that by now. I had a x40 and now
have a x41. Here the steps you have to take to have everything running
normally:



First, after recovering your Partitions, or unpacking the Laptop, boot
with some Linux CD (from a USB CD-Rom or Docking).

Mount hda1 and go to /windows/system32/ and rename the autoconvert.exe
to "noautoconvert.exe" (or anything else). This will prevent the system
to convert your Filesystem from the initial FAT32 to NTFS.



When you have everything installed. Shrink the FAT32 partition with
windows on it to a size you like.



Then install linux



make the 150 MB boot partition as the first one after the Windows
partition. Then you have to install GRUB to the BootRecord of that
partition. It will most likely be (hd0,2).



If you do that successfully, the only thing you have to do, is to set
that partition active, instead of the first (the windows) partition.



What will happen when you boot now:



Bios looks up the MBR, that one points to the Windows Boot Loader, that
one states, that the one and only ACTIVE partition present on the system
has to be booted (which in this case should be that one with GRUB on
it).



Well... there you go, have a super duper dualboot system, with IBM
rescue and recovery.



well... I have to say that this all worked for me on the x40. With the
x41 i still have some problems, but that seems to be a problem with
Ubuntu not being able to install into any other boot record than the
MBR. But I'll figure that out. It for sure works with FC4.



Well, have fun setting up your system!


-- 
qUBus