Help with old laptop - corrupt partition table

adam_d · Post by **adam_d** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 10:40 am

Hello

I recently got an old IBM Thinkpad a21p for free. It's a Pentium 3 850mhz, with 128mb ram and a 30gb hard drive. It came with Windows 2000 installed, but I thought as it was now a spare computer, I'd install Linux. I downloaded Xubuntu 7.04 which installed, and after some screen trouble, worked well. I thought I'd use it to experiment with different OSes as it had no files on to lose. I wanted to put XP on, but I didn't think it would run well with 128mb ram, so I made a nLite version, which ran smoothly enough. Then I decided to install DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 on it. Don't ask me why, just something I've wanted to do. I created a 1gb partition at the end of the drive, then realised DOS can only see the first 8gb. So I moved the partition to the front of the drive, then installed DOS and Win 3.11. Rebooted, everything worked fine, booted into DOS easily. Just needed to get the NT boot loader back. I was told to do a rescue install with the XP disk. After doing this and rebooting however, it stayed on the BIOS screen for much longer than normal with the HD access light on. Then up came Starting MS-DOS..., where it froze. I put in the DOS boot disk, which couldn't see anything on the drive. The Linux disc is the same, the partitioner says there are no partitions. I booted from the XP disk into the Recovery console, which recognized the XP install. I was told to do a /fixmbr and /fixboot, which I have done, and nothing changed. This was where I thought the partition table was gone. I used a BootItNG floppy to view the partition table. It tells me that there are 5 partitions on the disk, two NTFS, one Linux Ext3, on Linux Swap and one FAT16. However, it says they all start and finish at the same position on the disk. And it says the FAT16 partition is last, which makes me wonder how the Starting MS-DOS message is displayed at all.
When it was working, the hard disk layout was 1gb FAT16, 8gb NTFS (Win2k), 10gb Ext3, 200mb Linux Swap and 9gb NTFS (XP). The problem is, I don't know where the partitions start and end on the disk.
I would just reinstall everything, but because the XP is a stripped down version I'm not sure if all programs will work on it, that's why I kept 2000, but if I reinstall, I don't have a 2000 install disk. Also I think thsi amy be a good thing to learn.
And I don't think I have, but have I damaged the BIOS in some way now it hangs for a while, or is that just because of the corrupt MBR?

If that made sense to anyone, thanks for your help. And sorry for the long post.

Post by **bicostp** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 10:59 am

XP should run fine, especially if you run in Windows Classic mode (no shiny interface). I've run it on a lot less than that and it worked fine. (Pentium 166 with 64 MB of RAM

) Remember, XP came out in 2001 and SP2 was released in 2004. That computer was probably only a year or so old at the time. I'm sure whatever Linux thing you installed would have taken up at least as much of the system's resources.

As for your partition table, moving the FAT16 partition may have been the problem. Generally I don't like to move and resize partitions, and now you see why.

Reformat and start over with a full install of XP. You don't need to chop it up into a tiny crippled OS for it to run well. However, I suggest you use nLite to get rid of some installation garbage (MSN Messenger, MSN Explorer, Windows Tour...) to save some space, and update your installation media with the latest patches and service pack.

adam_d · Post by **adam_d** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 11:00 am

Ok, thanks, as long as I know I can get a full install of Windows on there, because I really don't like 2000.
And I don't think I'll be reinstalling Linux, because as you said in another topic, it doesn't have many advantages over Windows, and was a pain to get working.
I was thinking of making it into some sort of portable arcade, because I think it's got enough power for most emulators

Post by **bicostp** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 11:24 am

You should be able to get a bunch of emulators working, no problem. I suggest you install the frontend GameEx, which will give you a much better interface than dragging files all over the place.

Check the laptop for a TV out port. If it has 7 pins, you should be able to plug a normal S-video cable into it and it will work. (Combining the S-Video pins into Composite is fairly simple; you just need a capacitor.)

adam_d · Post by **adam_d** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 8:56 am

Thanks for that, it looks really good. Only thing is, it says it needs 256mb ram to run, and I only have 128. Or is that just recommended?

And the laptop doesn't have a tv out port. I've seen cables that let me connect the VGA port to a tv, but will this not damage the tv by using a too high resolution?