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I'm trying to back up my windows to make more room for linux. I'm basically going to have to move my windows partition to a Virtual drive, reformat the partition, and then move it back. If I get the MBR and I get the filesystem, do I have windows? I'm worried it has it's talons in my system in some way that when I put it back it won't work.


rK

Backing up the contents of the windows partition and re-coping them to the first primary partition should work. Windows won't have any hardware changes to deal with so it should boot without compliant. For the boot code linux's grub code will replace the windows boot code but it still not a bad idea to have a back up of windows boot code on hand in case it is ever needed.

Sounds like you're dual booting. I did this with one of my windows XP desktops and haven't had any problems with talons... I booted with a Knoppix Livecd and used the NTFSClone utility to copy the windows filesystem to an external drive. I repartitioned with fdisk, leaving an unformated space for linux, then wrote windows back to the HD. After booting back into windows, I inserted an ubuntu CD which apparently has an autorun file recognized by windows, and effectively installed Ubuntu from within XP (though it ran the standard ubuntu installation scripts). I'm guessing you'll be using Damn Small linux, or something more "hands-on", but I highly recommend NTFSClone...

I scp'ed the whole partition to my VM in the other room, reformatted my partition, scp'ed it all back, restored the mbr, and now it won't boot.

It's not my top priority -- I have hardly used Windows since I got my Linux to see my wireless card, and I have finals to worry about, but I want to fix it eventually. I have found that Windows help on the Net lacks the quality that the linux folks give...

rK

Hm.

I think when you copy the partition you need something that will scrape the boot code as well, assuming there is some in the first partition. I don't know if scp would do that for you, but dd probably would.

Here's a link to an article:

[url=http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_windows_xp_and_linux_xp_installed_first.htm]http://apcmag.com/how_to_dual_boot_windows_xp_and_linux_xp_installed_first.htm[/url]

that might help.

-Noah

How did you restore the mbr? If you have a bootable windows disk, you can boot with that and run the fixmbr command which will rewrite fresh code to the boot sector.

Windows help on the net may be lacking because they want to by paid for their knowledge '-)