2009-12-26T19:11:24+01:00 http://ewoutstam.com/ Ewout Stam 2009-12-26T00:00:00+01:00 http://www.ewoutstam.com/howto/aspire-one-reinstall-windows <p>About a year ago I got myself an Acer Aspire One, because it had a keyboard I could touch-type on normally. I got a Windows XP version although I was only planning to run Linux on it, because I could only get a Linux powered one with an 8 GB SSD. I thought that was a little small for my needs.</p> <p>When I installed Linux I'd made sure to leave the restore partition alone, I might need it if I wanted Windows XP again. No install disk was provided. Fair enough, the device doesn't even have a drive for it, but what if I wanted to run Windows and install a bigger hard drive?</p> <p>It was time to restore Windows. I also wanted to keep running Linux on it, so I backed up my home dir and ran the restore program. This was easy, it was an option in my Linux bootloader, which thought the restore partition was a Windows 2000/NT install. However it didn't work because it expected the partions right how they were <em>before</em> I installed Linux.</p> <p>So I fired up a live Linux USB drive (Ubuntu 9.10) and changed the partitions. You can use something like <em>Gparted</em> for this, it's on most live distributions. Then the bootloader didn't work any more, so I couldn't start the restore option. What you usually do is grab your Windows install disk and use the recovery console's Here's what I did to fix everything:</p> <ul> <li>Make sure the partitions are set up correctly. In my case this meant having the restore partition first, and all the remaining space was one fat32 partition. I formatted it fat32 just in case, but I'm not sure this step is required. Also make sure the first partition is set to <em>bootable</em>.</li> <li>Then I needed to set up the <em>MBR</em> so it would boot into the restore partition. For this you use the program <code>install-mbr</code>. I had to do <code>sudo aptitude install mbr</code> before I could do this.</li> <li>I used the command <code>sudo install-mbr -i n -p D -t 0 /dev/sda</code> to fix the mbr: <ul> <li><code>-i n</code> (do not display a menu)</li> <li><code>-p D</code> (start the system by loading the partition that has the bootable flag set)</li> <li><code>-t 0</code> (timeout before booting is 0)</li> <li><code>/dev/sda</code> (The drive to install the <em>MBR</em> on, in this case <code>/dev/sda</code>, the only hard drive on the system. </li> </ul> </li> <li>You will now be able to boot into the restore program, and restore Windows. Once the system reboots, you'll get the restore program again and again. You can use <code>install-mbr</code> with different options to make the Windows partition the bootable partition, but since I'm going to install Linux on this, which has it's own boot menu facilities, there's no need.</li> <li>The final task is to install Linux. I used <a href="http://www.kubuntu.org/" target="_blank">Kubuntu 9.10</a> which allowed me to resize the Windows partition without destroying it, as part of its installation process. Once the install was finished, I got a nice boot menu offering Linux, Windows XP, and the restore program, called something like "Windows NT/2000". Note that the restore program won't work until you reset the partitions to their factory state like I explained above. </li> </ul> 2009-12-15T00:00:00+01:00 http://www.ewoutstam.com/meta/site-back-up <p>I'm trying to figure out what to do with this site. Trying to use <a href="http://jekyllrb.com/" target="_blank">Jekyll</a> to make it do what I want. I could never find a blog engine that was nice to use. Jekyll is not a blog engine, but a static site generatior. Dynamic stuff like trackbacks and comments don't work, but I can set up something with Disqus. Maybe I'll do that sometime.</p> <p>I'll be reposting old blog posts later. And write new stuff.</p>