hardware and partitioning question

[philip]

1. The red/yellow/black line into my hard disk seems to be very stuck into the HDD. I assume though that it's possible to get it loose (from the power supply line, for example to replace it). Is it safe to pull really hard on it and is it normal that it takes so much force to get the it out.

2. If I partition a hard disk can I undo that later if needed?

3. Is it still possible to open windows (ME) via dos somehow? I tried the dos commands I remembered but they don't seem to work

Thanks for any help [img]smile.gif[/img] !

[andrewas]

1) That connector was poorly designed, it seems to be *very* prone to getting jamed. I've broken skin pulling those things out. Best way is to work it horizontaly, that distorts the socket and might just let you get it.

Also, some manufacturers have their monkeys *glue* the cable in. This is evil, but a stanley knife will sort it in no time. On the glue, not the cable.

2) Yes, but if you use the basic tools you will lose all data not backed up. Programs like partition magic will let you save at least part of the data.

3) If you boot to DOS, you need to run win.com, which is in the c:\windows directory. But I don't know if winME will load up this way.

[philip]

Originally posted by andrewas: 1) That connector was poorly designed, it seems to be *very* prone to getting jamed. I've broken skin pulling those things out. Best way is to work it horizontaly, that distorts the socket and might just let you get it. Also, some manufacturers have their monkeys *glue* the cable in. This is evil, but a stanley knife will sort it in no time. On the glue, not the cable. 2) Yes, but if you use the basic tools you will lose all data not backed up. Programs like partition magic will let you save at least part of the data. 3) If you boot to DOS, you need to run win.com, which is in the c:\windows directory. But I don't know if winME will load up this way.

Thanks for the help. I managed to get the connector loose.
If you mean fdisk with the basic tools, I'm going to use that [img]smile.gif[/img] I hear the only real catch of fdisk was the formatting but in everything I read so far on it, it was really clear. I read more bad things about partition magic and the way it works.
The win.com command works but it showed me why I want to try linux. Windows seems to forget to install a lot of stuff, ranging from boot disk files (luckily I still had one), to files that are needed to install drivers to files needed to run win.com. So I got a blue screen of death cause of a missing file. (Maybe I should do a restore of ms regclean, I don't think it would delete windows reg keys but still)

Now I only have to find a shop that sells 10 or 20 GB hard disks to install linux on. Thought a bit about fdisk and I think I don't want to format for at least a month.

[dplax]

I myself had had problems with Windows ME once when while trying to upgrade to Windows XP I got a system error, only rebooting was possible. And afterwards none of the two OS's would work. However after upgrading to XP I have not had any ajor problems with the OS. About Linux: here at university we have red hat linux and I personally don't like it. It runs much slower than XP and has so far had more bugs/errors for me. So I would say that if you can afford it XP is much better.

[philip]

Originally posted by dplax: I myself had had problems with Windows ME once when while trying to upgrade to Windows XP I got a system error, only rebooting was possible. And afterwards none of the two OS's would work. However after upgrading to XP I have not had any ajor problems with the OS. About Linux: here at university we have red hat linux and I personally don't like it. It runs much slower than XP and has so far had more bugs/errors for me. So I would say that if you can afford it XP is much better.

I wasn't going to use redhat as it's more for servers if I understand correctly. I think the distribution can make a lot of difference as I both hear from some it's hard to get drivers and all, while other distributions are said to be just as easy as windows. Some friends at school also recommended linux dualboot with windows for games.

WinME ran fine for 3 years and I liked it a lot. Recently I started to do and learn more stuff and I got errors everywhere. Linux is just a test, with dualboot winme next to it. I hear some distributions are much more stable than windows which doesn't sound ad at all. But I won't judge anything from my experience at school as our admin puts all kinds of stupid limitations and errors in it. I'd be surprised if he knew a lot of that stuff, so no opinion on XP from school.

I don't think I can actually run full linux cause I play too much games for it. Which is a shame I think once I get used to it I like linux more, but we'll see. For programming it's supposed to be a whole lot better. I don't see XP coming soon though, and I'm reluctant to upgrade anything on this PC cause it's over 3 years old.

[dplax]

If you are running both and you choose which one to run at start up then I definitely have to say it is a good idea, because both have their own good points.