1

Topic: Move VIsta

Currently making tests with GParted-livecd  and try to move Vista.
After rebooting I got a black screen of the death, need load my vista-dvd in the media-drive and after some steps, it reboots and checked for consistency, reboot again, and all is okay !

The problem around the black screen might come from offset I guess, just like it was with XP.
I gonna work on this point.

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

2

Re: Move VIsta

Here are all the steps to successfully perform a move : http://gparted.free.fr/screenshots/VIST … VISTA.html
Keep in mind, GParted is able to move your partition, but you NEED the vista cd-dvd to repair (ATM) Vista Boot Manager !

Larry
GParted-project Admin
Former GParted-LiveCD maintainer (2007)

3

Re: Move VIsta

LarryT wrote:

Currently making tests with GParted-livecd  and try to move Vista.
After rebooting I got a black screen of the death, need load my vista-dvd in the media-drive and after some steps, it reboots and checked for consistency, reboot again, and all is okay !

The problem around the black screen might come from offset I guess, just like it was with XP.
I gonna work on this point.

I have the same problem and it's more then a year since your post. Is there any update in GParted that fix this problem?

I purchased a ASUS M15Kr notebook (AMD Turion, 4 GB RAM, 320 GB Harddisk)

That's what I did:
1. I downloaded the last GParted Live-CD and burned it and booted right into it. (I had to add acpi=off)
2. The partitions on my disk looked like that:
unallocated (around 1MB)
sda1 recovery, vfat (around 7GB)
sda2 VistaOS, ntfs (aroung 100GB)
sda3 Data, ntfs (the rest)
3. I deleted sda1
4. I deleted sda3
5. I resized sda2 to the beginning of the harddisk.
6. The data where automaticly moved to the beginning of the partition.

All went fine up to that point.
Reboot didn't work as you reported -> Blank screen of death!

So I went back to the GParted Live CD since I have no Vista DVD (only a recovery DVD)
In GParted I see that the partition left (the one I resized) is still recognized as sda2!!!
How can that be?

I put back an image I luckily made with CloneZilla Live before all the operations.

I found that link somewhere else: http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-v … -download/.
That is what they claim: It cannot be used to install or reinstall Windows Vista, and just serves as a Windows PE interface to recovering your PC. Technically, one could re-create this installation media with freely-downloadable media from Microsoft (namely the Microsoft WAIK kit, a multi-gigabyte download); but it's damn-decent of Microsoft to make this available to Windows' users who might not be capable of creating such a thing on their own.

Any experiences with that?

The truth is out there ... I want to believe

4

Re: Move VIsta

Hi!

deschman wrote:

In GParted I see that the partition left (the one I resized) is still recognized as sda2!!!
How can that be?

Your partition table has a fixed size of four entries. The partition describes by the first entry will be /dev/sda1, the partition described by the second entry will be /dev/sdy2 and so on. When you received your computer, the first three entries were used, where sda1 was located at the beginning of the disk and sda3 was at the end of the drive.
GParted has cleared out the first and third entries, thus deleting the first and third partitions; however, it did not move the metadata describing your Vista boot partition to the first partition table entry. After the work I've done using GParted, this seems to be the normal behaviour - and it usually is not a problem; nearly any operating system (as far as I kniow, excemtions are DOS and the old DOS-based Windows versions) can cope with this. If you remember the good ols 100 MByte iomega Zip diskettes: These disks had a partition table, too, and they were partitioned with one partition spanning the whole diskette - which was described by the fourth partition table entry; the first three entries were always empty. No problem in this - you could use them anywhere, and you could boot off these diskettes as well...

I think the black screen could be because you deleted the first partition. It is well possible that the Windows boot loader does not rely on the partition table entry describing a partition, but on the total number of partitions on the drive (and on the position of the system partition in this list).
This would mean that originally, the boot loader searched for the Windows system files on the second partition; however, since you deleted all but one partition, there is no second partition any more after you were finished with GParted. Thus, the boot loader would just search empty space...
My suggestion is that you delete only the data partition and grow the Vista system partition to the end of the disk. THis way, you'll keep the partition numbering intact, and you'll keep the recovery partition as well - deleting this partition can (depending on the manufacturer's conditions) even void your computer's warranty!

5

Re: Move VIsta

Thanks for your quick and detailed response.

stormhead wrote:

...it did not move the metadata describing your Vista boot partition to the first partition table entry.

I have some problems understandig this part: Do you mean that in the partition table the lasting partition is still the second partition even if there is no other partition in front of it anymore?

In that case vista should also see it as second partition and still boot according to your explanation.

The warranty point I wasn't aware of, so I probably will first check this...

I will try to shrink the vista partition a bit, cause I want to have Linux on my machine and at least one partition with shared data which I can use with both OS's.

The truth is out there ... I want to believe

6

Re: Move VIsta

Hi!

deschman wrote:

I have some problems understandig this part: Do you mean that in the partition table the lasting partition is still the second partition even if there is no other partition in front of it anymore?

Exactly: You have only obne partiton on your drive, but this partition is defined by the second partition table entry.

In that case vista should also see it as second partition and still boot according to your explanation.

Yes, you're right - if the Vista boot loader looks at the partition table entry that definesy the Vista partition.
However, if the boot loader does not take care about the entries defining each partitioon, but simply counts the partitions (from the beginning of the diek to the end), then the partition numbers would change (before deleting the recovery partition, the Vista partition is the second partition on the drive; after deleting, there's no partition before the Vista partition anymore, so it is the first partition).
I don't know exactly how the Vista boot loader works (and I'm not interested in buying Vista just to check this ;-) ) - so the only thing I can suggest right now is to try again - but this time, leave the recovery partition in its place!

The warranty point I wasn't aware of, so I probably will first check this...

I will try to shrink the vista partition a bit, cause I want to have Linux on my machine and at least one partition with shared data which I can use with both OS's.

OK. Please keep in mind that Linux usually needs at least two partitions - one as installation target, one as swap space (Windows uses a file - usually on its system partition - as swap space; Linux uses a separate partition for this purpose). In theory, both partitions may be either primary or logical; however, you usually can avoid some problems when the Linux system partition is a primary partition.
Also, think about the file system you want to use on your shared data partition - Windows can not access the typical Linux file systems (although there are drivers fior ext2/ext3 available), and Linux' NTFS suport is based on reverse engineering. So you best format the shared data partition as FAT32 (it may be either a primary or a logical partition).

7

Re: Move VIsta

Thanks stormhead for your help.

stormhead wrote:

so the only thing I can suggest right now is to try again - but this time, leave the recovery partition in its place!

Maybe I should try to empty the recovery partition and resize it to lets say about 1MB wink (if there is no warranty violation with this)

I already knew that I need at least two partitions (swap, system) for linux since I use linux quite some time.

I was thinking of the ext3 file system for the shared partition since there are drivers for windows and I am actually planning to use linux most of the time. Do you have experiences with those drivers?

greetings

The truth is out there ... I want to believe

8

Re: Move VIsta

Hi!

deschman wrote:

Maybe I should try to empty the recovery partition and resize it to lets say about 1MB wink (if there is no warranty violation with this)

... or move Vista towards the end of the drive, expand the recovery partition, reformat it as ext3 or whatever you want to use on yoer Linux root FS - and install Linux there. Since you want to use Linux most of the time, this could make sense since a hard drive typically reaches the highest transfer rates (and shortest seek times) at the beginning of the disk - so you would get maximum performance on your root filesystem.
However, the disadvantage would be that then the swap partition would likely be located behind the Vista partition (otherwise you'd change the partition order on disk again, perhaps jamming the Vista boot loader), so if your system needs to swap a lot, the heads would have to "jump" over the Vista partition all the time.

Another point would be that using this partition layout, you could get along using only primary partitions - which are far more resistent against drive erriors since thze metadata describing a primary partition is stored in a well-defined place on the hard drive. For the first logical partition, the position of this metadata is (in principle) determined by the partition table in the MBR, for the second logical partition, the first one determines tha place of metadata storage, for the third logical partition it's the second and so on. Thus, yopur logical partitions form a chain across your drive - break the chain at one place (hard drive or software error), and you'll lose not only the logical partition directly affected by the error, but also all your logical partitions behind this one.
This does not mean that using logical partitions in practice is insecure or risky - but by avoiding logical partitions, you can reduce the (minimal) risk of partiton damage even further by reducing the number of hard drive sectors your partitions depend on.

I was thinking of the ext3 file system for the shared partition since there are drivers for windows and I am actually planning to use linux most of the time. Do you have experiences with those drivers?

I'm using ext2fsd ( http://ext2fsd.sourceforge.net/ ) on my "playground" machine to access the Linux partition from Windows 2000. I didn't stumble across any problems right now, but you should know that I only use this driver for read-only access - I have a FAT32 partition as a common storage area on this machine, and so I can put data that should go to the Linux partition there and copy it the next time I run Linux.
If I understood everything right, journalling is not implemented yet - the driver reads the journal and replays it if the filesystem is found to be unclean, but during operation it does not write to the journal, so if your Windows crashes, you'll have to run a time-consuming e2fsck on the Linux partition.

9

Re: Move VIsta

Hi again!

Wow, stormhead, thanks a lot for your hints! I really appreciate your detailed explanations!

I will inform about the warranty thing and depending on the outcome I will see what I do next...

I must say I'm glad that I made an image of the vendors original setup and installation, so I am able to try some different partition set-ups.

Thanks again for your help stormhead.

The truth is out there ... I want to believe

10

Re: Move VIsta

I'd like to remind that this section is related to the GParted development and testing. There is a special parted for support issues. It is easier to find them after, by searching the specific section only.
smile

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

11

Re: Move VIsta

Hi class413,

class413 wrote:

...this section is related to the GParted development and testing...

Originally my first post was a reaction on LarryT's last post. But you are right, the discussion went far from 'development and testing'. Sorry for this. Is it for you as moderator possible to move the discussion to an appropriate section?

The truth is out there ... I want to believe

12

Re: Move VIsta

Unfortunately, I can move the entire thread but not  just some posts.

*** It is highly recommended to backup any important files before doing resize/move operations. ***

13

Re: Move VIsta

LarryT wrote:

The problem around the black screen might come from offset I guess, just like it was with XP.
I gonna work on this point.

It seems  as if this is not only a problem when moving the vista partition. I just resized it and I also get a blank screen. Because I had no Vista DVD (only ASUS recovery) I gave them: http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-v … -download/ a chance. And it worked....

My question still would be if there is still work on a solution on this issue?

By the way: I checked the warranty conditions of my ASUS Notebook. That's the reaction of the service staf:

Dear Sir,

You are not losing any warranty on the notebook because this is software and software is no Warranty.

Best Regards, / Met vriendelijke groet,

ASUS Tsd Team

The truth is out there ... I want to believe

14

Re: Move VIsta

I see his point on some fronts -- admittedly, Microsoft's official publicity material hasn't done a great job of explaining the basic benefits of Vista.

Microsoft's talk of Vista's ‘richer experience' and ‘getting ready for a new day' just makes the hardened tech user roll their eyes and move on.

However, I've been running Vista at APC since the earliest leaked builds, and witnessed its extraordinary evolution as Microsoft meandered its way towards the final product.

Sure, the earlier versions included some bold features which were dropped for the sake of familiarity in the final version, but there's still lots to appreciate about the "RTM" version of Vista.

I'm not talking here about a nicer user interface or security - I figure APC readers already know how to run a secure XP box and how to de-Fisher-Price it.

Here are the real benefits: things that will actually make a difference to you day-to-day.