Glad to hear you got it working Beth! Just out of curiosity, shouldn't the particianing software for your linux system have found your Windows partician and created a new partician for linux? I'm curious because I, one day, want to have a duel-boot system and thought from the docs I read that you could just have the linux particianer resize the particians for you so Bill and the penguin could live happily? ----- Original Message ----- From: "Beth Hatch" <bhatch200@xxxxxxxxxxx> To: "Speakup is a screen review system for Linux." <speakup at braille.uwo.ca> Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2007 8:46 AM Subject: Thinkpad Saga Continues > > > Hi everyone, Because so many of you kindly posted on this list and > privately to me concerning getting Linux on my Thinkpad, I figured I > would update you all on what has happened in case it saves some of you > the trouble and annoyance I have been experiencing lately.<smile> I'm > sure those of you more knowledgeable than myself on this may have been > able to resolve it better and quicker, but I'm still learning, as you > will soon see.<smile> > > > > My machine came with a 120 gigabyte hard drive with a 30 gigabyte > rescue partition containing the computer's recovery files, the other > partition was taken up by Windows XP and various Thinkpad and Windows > applications. > > First, I tried to hook up the docking station and install Fedora > using the docking station's serial port to have Speakup talk for me. > Speakup could not be found when I specified my Dectalk express as the > synthesizer, whether I specified a tty port by naming it specifically as > suggested by Janina or by having Speakup find it without specifying the > tty port. Consequently, in order to do my class assignments, I decided > to have my instructor assist me in installing Fedora and together we > got Gnome and Orca up and running. > > When we tried to install Windows XP to set up the dual boot system, > my XP disk kept hanging at the hardware inspection portion of the > installation. Believe me, if I didn't need this laptop for school which > requires Windows and Linux, I would just keep a Linux system!!<smile> > Lenovo tech support said on its web site to turn off the dual core > processor support in the bios temporarily to allow Windows XP to install > properly. I had a friend assist me and we turned off the dual core as > directed. We still couldn't install XP, same problem, XP hanging at the > hardware inspection process. > > Just for grins, a fellow geek friend who agreed to help me disabled > just about everything in the bios, just to get XP running, no go with > that either, same problem. She tried a Windows 2000 disk, just to see > if she could see my Linux partition, and voila! Windows 2000 at least > figured out that Linux lived on my system and found the rescue > partition. She nuked those partitions for me, and we are starting from > scratch!! It seems that Linux and grub will see my Windows partition if > I install Windows *before* Windows, but Windows XP gets cranky and won't > see my Linux partition if I install Linux first and then try to install > Windows afterwards. I realize that this sounds strange, so let me > clarify. Since there were only two partitions, I had to break the > larger one to install Linux and the one for the rescue partition wasn't > big enough for Fedora with all of the other applications and data in the > rescue partition. I didn't have access to something like partition > magic to rebuild the partitions, so we had to take this crazy route > instead. This appears to be what happens at school with all of the dual > boot systems where XP and Fedora 6 are involved, Windows seems to be > happy being installed first, then Linux and grub set up the dual boot > properly. XP is now on my machine, and I am going to try again to > install Linux. > > Word to the wise, if you have a Thinkpad, the serial port appears to > be disabled by default in the bios. We turned it on, and now I'm going > to try > again and see how it goes. I'll keep you posted, unfortunately this > thing isn't over yet.<smile> > > Thanks for listening, > > Beth > > _______________________________________________ > Speakup mailing list > Speakup at braille.uwo.ca > http://speech.braille.uwo.ca/mailman/listinfo/speakup >
