System Commander 7 not working - any pure Linux alternatives?

[Guy Rouillier]

On Mon, 29 Mar 2004 11:28:11 -0800
Mark Knecht <markknecht at comcast.net> wrote:

> On Mon, 2004-03-29 at 10:24, Rick Stevens wrote:
> 
> > 
> > That's odd.  I was able to resize my laptop using SC7.01.
> 
> I started by installing 7.04. I'm now using the 7.05 update. 
> 
> It's not that it won't resize the partition. I never get to the screen
> that shows the partitions. It just sits with the message about analyzing
> my system. It won't do a second OS install either. Sits with the same
> message.

I had this exact same problem on SC7.05 on an old dual Pentium  MMX 233.  I called V-Com, and on the phone, they maneuvered me through some hidden menus, had me change a setting, and the problem went away.  My cryptic notes say "on setup screen, use alt-F9 - special setup options".  I guess I thought what to do from there must be self-evident, because I didn't scribble down anything more.

I called V-Com recently.  I had purchased Partition Magic because SC7 is getting a little dated and didn't feel confident using it on XP NTFS, but really didn't like PM.  The V-Com guy said that SC8 will be out "within 3 months" - that was two months ago.  SC is one of my standby's so I'll be upgrading when it comes out, to get ReiserFS resizability.

I also have a laptop without a floppy (eMachines M6805 AMD64), but it has a built-in 6-format memory card reader.  I bought a Compact Flash card and put the Linux boot files on it, but unfortunately the system will not boot from the memory cards.  Keeping my fingers crossed for a BIOS upgrade.  Resisting buying an external floppy - you can always make bootable CDs.

> 
> I have a suspicion that it may be chipset related. I booted Dyne:bolic
> and using lspci I see an ATI chipset - north bridge, south bridge,
> pretty much the whole machine except the networking (both wired and
> wireless) and 1394, are ATI. Probably there's some weird little glitch
> recognizing the EIDE controllers or something...
> 
> 
> > No.  There is no linux utility that will resize an NTFS partition.  NTFS
> > is supported via a kernel module just like NFS or any other filesystem, 
> > but the "write" versions of the module can hose NTFS to a point that not
> > even Winblows can recover it.
> 
> As I thought. Thus, I could blow the whole machine away, do a Linux
> install first, keeping partition 1 for XP, then install XP and just live
> with the primary partition I suppose. No reason I can't make a FAT32
> partition using Linux and share that between Linux and XP I suppose.
> 
> It's nice that Linux is so flexible...
> 
> > 
> > SC7.01 resized my NTFS just fine.  Partition Commander 8 should also do
> > a bang-up job.  You may need to simply reinstall SC7.01 to get it to
> > work or boot off the floppies or CD rather than the hard disk to get it
> > to work (NTFS can do some weird things).
> 
> I sent a tech support message to V-Com this morning. If I can engage
> them in a conversation I'll find out about Partition Commander 8
> handling this. 
> 
> Thanks for your help.
> 
> Cheers,
> Mark
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Guy Rouillier