corrupted partition table

I bought EComStation 1.2 over a year ago and am still waiting to get it 
istalled. My experience so far:

1. - ThinkPad T43, XP and Win 2000, three empty partitions, BootMagic, 
partitioned with PM. LVM reports corrupted partition table.

2. - LG TX42 with external CD/DVD drive. The first disk loads OK from the
external CD, but the second cannot be found. Support people tell me 
external drives are not supported, but I could fiddle ECS in by creating 
an image of
one installed in another system. Have not been able to try 'cos cannot 
install
it in another system.
 
3. - My old trusty no-name desktop, Warp 4, Win 2000, BootManager, 3 hard 
disks, seven partitions, partitioned with Warp. LVM reports corrupted 
partition table.

4. - IBM ThinkCentre M50, XP, I do not know how it was partitioned, but XP 
reports C: 10G, E: 30G, both NTFS (D: is CD/DVD drive and E: is empty and 
waiting for ECS). LVM reports corrupted partition table. 

Now there must be something I do not know and I cannot find any proper 
documentation. Is there something I can do to the ThinkCentre disk with XP 
that would make LVM to recognize the partition table? Or should I abandon 
hope and move to Linux (am allergic to Windows)? I am not buying any more 
computers to experiment.

yours desperate

Eeva

Hi Eeva

Eeva Häkkinen wrote:
> I bought EComStation 1.2 over a year ago and am still waiting to get it 
> istalled. My experience so far:
> 
> 1. - ThinkPad T43, XP and Win 2000, three empty partitions, BootMagic, 
> partitioned with PM. LVM reports corrupted partition table.
> 


Not surprised.
 From posts I have seen over several years most Windows-based "disk 
rearranging" software seems to cause problems for other operating systems.

Download and install the demo of DFSee www.dfsee.com and see what that 
reports.

If you can figure out how to use the DFSee demo to repair the partition 
table(s) Great! - if not I suggest Registering DFSee and then asking 
DFSee support for help. The DFSee author has a reputation for being very 
helpful - but only for Registered users  :-)



> 2. - LG TX42 with external CD/DVD drive. The first disk loads OK from the
> external CD, but the second cannot be found. Support people tell me 
> external drives are not supported, but I could fiddle ECS in by creating 
> an image of
> one installed in another system. Have not been able to try 'cos cannot 
> install
> it in another system.
>


Back to this problem after solving others - you should be able to xcopy 
an installation once you have completed an install on another system.



> 3. - My old trusty no-name desktop, Warp 4, Win 2000, BootManager, 3 
> hard disks, seven partitions, partitioned with Warp. LVM reports 
> corrupted partition table.
> 


I seem to recall something about a utility that prepared pre-LVM 
partitioned disks to work with LVM - something to do with adding LVM 
data somewhere on the disk I think.

That utility must have been included with eCS1.0 because I upgraded a 
Warp4 non-LVM system to eCS1.0 with LVM without problems.


> 4. - IBM ThinkCentre M50, XP, I do not know how it was partitioned, but 
> XP reports C: 10G, E: 30G, both NTFS (D: is CD/DVD drive and E: is empty 
> and waiting for ECS). LVM reports corrupted partition table.


Back to the answer for 1. - DFSee


> Now there must be something I do not know and I cannot find any proper 
> documentation. Is there something I can do to the ThinkCentre disk with 
> XP that would make LVM to recognize the partition table? Or should I 
> abandon hope and move to Linux (am allergic to Windows)? I am not buying 
> any more computers to experiment.
> 
> yours desperate
> 
> Eeva
> 


I think DFSee is your answer but whether you need to Register it or not 
is down to your technical capability.

Hope the above is of help.

Hello & thank you so much!

No trouble with registering DFSee, I actually like to register the 
softwere I use. I'll try that. 

Just one question: 
How is one supposed to start after buying a system with one harddisk and 
some flavor of Windows installed. You do not want to remove it (for 
possible compatibility needs), so as far as I know, you have to use some 
3rd party software to split the disk. Does that destroy your chance to 
install eCS? Do
you always need DFSee come to rescue. If so, why is it not bundled with 
rCS? 
Or is LVM clever enough to partition the disk while installing and leave 
Windows 
intact? And where is the documentation telling me things like that when I 
start?

(Well, actually that was several questions - but after this kind of 
experience, that is something you wonder...) 

thanks again

Eeva

Hi Eeva

Eeva Häkkinen wrote:
> Hello & thank you so much!
> 
> No trouble with registering DFSee, I actually like to register the 
> softwere I use. I'll try that.
> Just one question: How is one supposed to start after buying a system 
> with one harddisk and some flavor of Windows installed. You do not want 
> to remove it (for possible compatibility needs), so as far as I know, 
> you have to use some 3rd party software to split the disk. Does that 
> destroy your chance to install eCS? Do
> you always need DFSee come to rescue. If so, why is it not bundled with 
> rCS? Or is LVM clever enough to partition the disk while installing and 
> leave Windows intact? And where is the documentation telling me things 
> like that when I start?
> 
> (Well, actually that was several questions - but after this kind of 
> experience, that is something you wonder...)
> thanks again
> 
> Eeva
> 


That "Just one question:" definitely seems to be several...  ;-)

Presuming that Windows occupies all of the existing disk (often the case 
on a pre-installed system) you have a choice:-

1] Add another disk - might depend on space and controller being available

2] "Shrink" the existing Windows partition to make space on the disk -

this is usually "addon software" rather than supplied with operating 
systems. I believe I read somewhere that eCS2.0 will have a limited 
subset of the DFSee application which will include that capability but 
hope someone else can confirm/deny that.


It seems from various postings seen over a few years that some, maybe 
all, of the usual Windows addon disk tools that can do this job do it 
badly causing problems when trying to install other operating systems 
into the free space created. Maybe others with more direct experience of 
any problems encountered after using this type of software could comment.


I am not related to and do not get paid for "plugging" DFSee - but,
Yes, 
it is probably the best tool for the job as regards sorting out the mess 
other disk software can leave. Hopefully others will express an opinion 
here...

As far as I am aware it is the only tool available to eCS users to 
enable them to FAT32 format a drive - the FAT32 driver package does not 
yet have that capability.

I must Register a copy of DFSee myself sometime; so far I have been 
lucky in my attempts to rectify the occasional disk problem by using the 
demo version but 1 day my luck will run out I'm sure  :-)


Of course, once you have shrunk the Windows partition and rectified any 
disk errors found by DFSee installing eCS should be fairly easy but it 
can depend on the hardware involved. If you run into problems with 
unsupported hardware the best thing to do is ask if any required 
driver(s) exist somewhere.


After installing eCS1.2 the 1st thing to do is download and install the 
current ECSMT update tool and then use that tool to update the system - 
I think there has been 1 fixpack release plus various other driver 
updates since the release of eCS1.2


As to documentation: Usually found in the root directory of the install 
CD although offhand I cannot say if it covers any of the above. I must 
put my hand up as someone who rarely looks at the docs before attempting 
anything - like many other people I may look if all else fails  :-)

Come to think of it I believe the eCS1.2 Install CD has a copy of the 
BIOS recommended settings, possibly called biostips.txt, in the root 
directory as well. If not you should find it here 
http://ewiki.ecomstation.nl/BiosRecommendations

It may be worth checking through the mainboard BIOS settings with that 
doc before starting an install.


Finally (for the moment): there is a tool available on hobbes that you 
may find helpful with USB configuration 
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu/pub/os2/system/usbcfgb7a.zip

If you are not familiar with eCS (OS/2) you may not be aware that Hobbes 
http://hobbes.nmsu.edu is a fairly large OS/2 software repository that 
is worth a "root through" for applications and drivers.

Hope the above is of use.

Eeva, I am sure you know about how men do not like to stop and ask 
directions :) I think the documentation idea is similar here. Also, 
PartitionMagic can be used to work with the drive to shrink the XP volume 
with ease, but you will need to use DFSEE to write LVM information to the 
drive and clean some values in the Partition Table. Once the LVM info is 
taken care of, you can install very easily. I used Partition Magic and DFSEE 
here to make sure I could install eCS on my XP hard drive.