Comments on: SUSE Linux, WinXP & Access IBM on the ThinkPad T43

by: salman

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 16:54:57 +0000

IBM TP A30, with Suse 10 and WinXP and the same problem.
Tried restoring MBR with YAST - didn’t worked for me.
I have installed then Debian 4.0, with seperate /boot partition, setup wizard found WinXP partition and added it to grub. After reboot, I’ve added below line to /boot/grub/menu.1st, then invoked `grub-install /dev/hda` and after reboot I have succesfully booted IBM service partition.

title Maintenance Partition

unhide (hd0,1)
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

Peace,
salman

by: Asif Iqbal

Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:01:12 +0000

Hi
I have dual boot system on my hard drive one is winxp sp2 and redhat enterprise linux 4 update 5 .
But my user except root not a single user is able to create a directory on mounted windows partition as I have used Chmod thesecommands
chmod 777 /dev/hda2 and
chmod 777 /windows/D_drive -R
is there any procedure by editing fstab file then please suggest me

Thanks
Asif Iqbal

by: Pi

Sat, 26 May 2007 16:04:56 +0000

Hi, I wish I have read your post before I installed windows Vista on my Thinkpad T60p. I did not make any boot CDs. Nor did I set the predesktop area to secure. Now I can not access the boot partion on my harddisk using the ThinkVantage button on starup any more. Do you think there is still a way to access that partition and restore my laptop to the factory state? Any help would be appreciated.
Pi

by: Ruchi

Sun, 15 Apr 2007 03:30:12 +0000

Hey Sharad!
Was looking for a similiar kind of solution….but being the moron I am i managed to actually crash ma system…..The access ibm button doesn’t work…..i didnt have ma rescue cds…..
just have the hidden partition created by ibm ppl…..which shows when i try to install fresh a new OS…..
wht do i do…???????????????????????????????? :(
i have managed to create more ruckus….installed win xp over the rst of sys w/o destroying the hidden partition…..trust me ..i did lots before tht…
now i download drivers to atleast get it working…..but………

sound vague…but drop a light if u can!

by: tarun

Sun, 28 Jan 2007 00:06:09 +0000

hi
I just bought T43 with biosecurity. It has window xp OS. I am keen to install FEDORA CORE 6 as well. But i dont know how to….. If any body can help me in this regard. A Step by step procedure will be a great help. My confusion is that whether biosecurity will work in FC6 or not. Is there special precaution to be taken care of? Any help/support shall be highly appreciated.

cheers

-t

by: Roger

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 13:39:06 +0000

Great dual-booting info.

The next challenge:

booting linux via USB.

I have the same trouble as the above post — grub is executed, kernel loads but root partition is not found.
conflict between SCSI & IDE naming conventions it seems.

I am tying first to verify if you can boot to XP via USB.

Dual booting anything (except recovery ..) via USB hard drive, is not easy or obvious.

It must be possible as I can boot off a USB drive that has “restore & rescue” installed on it.

But booting off the internal XP hardrive swapped into the USB drive will not work.
IE. it boots when Bios is set to “HD-0″ & disk is in caddy attached to motherboard

But the same disk swapped into USB drive & bios changed accordingly it will not boot

The system accesses the USB drive & just hangs with no error message. It will not then move onto the next boot device.

Any success stories out there ?

by: Avimanyu

Tue, 26 Sep 2006 16:26:46 +0000

I NEED YOUR HELP!!
I tried installing mandriva in my usb 40gb drive attached to my ibm thinkpad r52.All went well but at the end I could not boot to mandriva it gave a kernel panic error saying that init not found.I edited the kernel statement giving init=3 at the end and tried booting but got the same error.Then I formatted that partition back to fat32 using windows’ partition manager.Later I tried installing ubuntu on the same partition but accidentally at the end i loaded grub to the mbr of the internal disk.After booting i expected grub to load but in vain .Then i reinstalled ubuntu and loaded grub to the usb partition in which ubuntu was installed.On booting i got the grub menu which could neither load ubuntu or windows.I was in a real FIX!!I thought for a moment and inserted the mandriva dvd back again reformatted the usb partition to ext3 and installed it again!I got the mandriva grub menu back which can load windows but not mandriva.I was relieved to get back windows!But now the access IBM button doesn’t work during booting.You said that we need to shrink Windows using the linux dvd.How to shrink and how to create primary partition for boot.Please kindly elaborate ur above explanation as I am real beginner in linux.

by: sulio

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 21:38:42 +0000

hi all. i got a similar problem with the rescue partition. only i got no backup CDs and a windows xp install cd overwrote the boot.ini file on the rescue partition:( i’d like to ask if anyone can post the contents of a working boot.ini file from a rescue and recovery partition?

by: Stewart

Sat, 06 May 2006 16:44:42 +0000

Thank you, Sharad! I can confirm that your tips work on a T40 ThinkPad with Ubuntu 5.10 “Breezy Badger” to make a dual-boot XP-Linux system with Access IBM conveniences intact! I love “childishly simple” solutions — they’re usually the best (and right) ones, cf. Occam’s Razor!

by: Richard

Fri, 21 Apr 2006 13:22:24 +0000

Just to report my success in using the previous postings to make a T43 dual-boot both XP
and RHEL 4 Update 3. Here is what I did:
1) If a pre-loaded XP is to be saved, use Partition Magic to make room for Linux.
2) Via the BIOS, make “Secure” the IBM predesktop area.
3) When installing RHEL, make /boot a separate AND primary partition
which will be /dev/sda2. Leave the Boot Loader as GRUB.
Under Advanced Boot Loader Configuration,
Install Boot Loader record on /dev/sda2 which is First sector of boot partition.
4) When you reboot now, it will boot into XP with no awareness of Linux.
The next step is to modify NTLoader so that it offers the option of
booting Linux. This URL has lots of info on that:
http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Dual_Boot_from_Windows_Bootloader_%28NTLDR%29_and_why
I did the following:
I took my USB flash drive which is formatted using vfat and plugged it into
a USB port so that the dim green light came on.
Then I booted the laptop using RHEL linux rescue, did the chroot /mnt/sysimage.
Unfortunately, the flash drive did not mount itself.
So, I did the following which was sufficient if not all of it necessary:
mount -t usbfs none /proc/bus/usb
mkdir /media/usbdisk
mount /dev/sdb1 /media/usbdisk ## what other disk/partition could it be on?
cd /media/usbdisk
dd if=/dev/sda2 of=grub.mbr bs=512 count=1
cd ..
umount /media/usbdisk
5) Now boot under Windows XP:
cd to C:\
copy e:\grub.mbr . ## e is where the flash drive wound up

attrib -s -h -r c:\boot.ini

You can now browse to this file, open it and add this line to the bottom:
c:\grub.mbr=”Red Hat Linux”

attrib +s +h +r c:\boot.ini

My deepest appreciation to all who shared their experiences and
thus made this experience a walk in the park for me.