Thinkpad Hidden Partition & MBR

[Paulius Bulotas]

Hi,

On 04 09 25, Thomas Beer wrote:
> I consider buying an T41 or T42. What I couldn't check out
> on the web, the archive nor in other lists is how to handle
> the hidden partition and the existing installation of M$.
> For the time being I would like to keep XP and repartition
> a 60GB disk. It seems unclear which bootloader c/should be
> used and the procedure of installation (generally I'm firm
> installing FreeBSD). Any experiences installing FBSD on
> a recent T4x with a hidden partition?

the procedure should be simple, automatic winxp install from hidden
partition uses first primary partition, which could be almost any
size (only that it would be enough for install, minimum ~ 3gb?) I had
some problems with disk geometry, can't remember exactly how I solved
that (as I remember after installation XP complained about incorrect
values in partition table).
I'm using XP boot loader to boot FreeBSD, so that I don't have to
worry when reinstalling XP. I'd suggest using fat32 for XP, but
automatic installation will convert fat32 to ntfs. But you can avoid
that by doing like this:
http://www.chronox.de/x40_linux/linux_on_x40.html#prevent_windows_xp_partition_to_convert_to_ntfs

Paulius