Jim Crumley wrote: > For completeness let me mention what my final solution to this > problem was. I reinstalled from the recovery partition, but then > I stopped the recovery process before its final step, which is to > convert from fat32 to ntfs file systems. > > Scot, how did you dd your recovery partition? At least on my > machine the recovery partition doesn't show up in the partition > table - its just listed as free space. Did you recovery > partition show up in the partition table? Or is there some way to > get dd to look at part of a drive without referencing a > partition? This is how the drive looked from the factory: hda1 is Windows XP Pro. First boot of the computer when new is a FAT32 partition. On next bootup, system automatically converts FAT32 to NTFS *WITHOUT* prompting you. You don't have a choice about it. hda2 is the hidden recovery partition that works with F11 key. The idea is that the entire "factory image" is stored on a hidden partition. You boot the computer and press F11 when prompted and it puts back the original factory image of Windows XP in /dev/hda1. I've read that the MBR has something to do with the F11 key and that you shouldn't touch the MBR if you ever intend to use the recovery image. Disk /dev/hda: 240 heads, 63 sectors, 2584 cylinders Units = cylinders of 15120 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 2441 18453928+ 7 HPFS/NTFS /dev/hda2 2442 2584 1081080 1c Hidden Win95 FAT32 (LBA) I copied the entire partition in case I ever want to put winxp back on the machine the way it came from the factory. # save the recovery partition as it exists on disk dd if=/dev/hda2 of=/nfs_server/path/hda2.img # to view what's contained in the image from a linux system: mount -t vfat -o ro,loop=/dev/loop0 ./hda2.img /mnt/cdrom # also save the MBR since that has something to do with the F11 key dd if=/dev/hda of=/nfs_server/path/hda-mbr.img bs=512 count=1 ------ Notes: source: http://www.coelacanth.com/~nick/t23/index.html#part If the recovery partition is to be kept, it is necessary that THE MASTER BOOT RECORD (MBR) NOT BE TOUCHED in the installation. IBM has specific boot bits here such that F11 can be pressed at startup to boot to /dev/hda2 (Recovery Partition). Without these bits in the MBR, factory recovery will not be functional, period. -- scot _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list