Non-destructive? Don't get me started

[tattaloop]

So, I bought this new Hewlett P 17inch laptop and it worked fine. Needless to say, I soon changed that.

I have a old thinkpad with linux and no Win software on the HDD, so I thought I would eventually put linux on the new HP too. I decided to do dual-boot and keep Vista, at least for a while. In preparation for this I downloaded gparted. This is a linux distribution that you load onto a USB stick, and then you boot from it. It includes an application that does non-destructive repartitioning... so they say...

I shrunk the NTFS partition to about half the size it was before and left the rest of the HDD empty, then shutdown to reboot.

There Vista was, gone The computer was asking me to put in the Vista install disk, which, in my case, I have not got.

The shrunken NTFS partition is still visible when I boot gparted, but Vista not works.

Oh well, I was planning to put linux on it anyway. So I used my thinkpad to download the latest Slackware DVD image, from which to make a bootable DVD+R.

Spoke too soon. The burner application kept stopping with "input/output error", so I assume that the thinkpad's DVD player is buggered. Copied the image to my mother's Win XP laptop and tried to burn it there. Application said it was a success, but I couldn't boot from it. This happened with two different burner applications. They both said they had done it, but it would not boot.

I now have this shiny new Pewlett Hackard, and the only system I can get it to run is gparted, the tiny linux on the stick, with the old kernel.

Non destructive repartitioning? If I start laughing I might not stop. I think I have got one of my heads coming on.