Hi,
I have a Lenovo thinkpad T400 with Vista x64 that I want to dual-boot with fedora 10.
The T400's original config has 3 primary partions:
1) Vista boot partition (some weird partition that it only uses to boot... this is my first time using Vista so I don't know the details, but I think it has to be there and it has to be a separate partition from the "data" partition)
2) Vista data partition
3) Lenovo Rescue and Recovery partition (a separate bootable partition that is used for recovery, backups, ...)
My first attempt was to shrink the recovery partition and add a new extended partition that has the two standard fedora logical volumes and an extra NTFS to be shared between the OS's (I usually use FAT32 for this one, but NTFS support seems to be pretty solid now).
Everything was fine, but I couldn't boot into the rescue partition. According to this site:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Rescue_and_Recovery
(under "Newer versions of Rescue and Recovery" section)
You *have* to have a linux boot partition be your primary partition. Other people have told me the same thing and that site has an explanation, but I don't get it =)
So, it seems that I need 5 primaries (3 original vista/lenovo primaries, 1 linux primaray to put the boot stuff into, and 1 extended for everything else) to make this work (which is not possible).
Can anyone think of something else I could do (other than getting rid of Vista and the Lenovo stuff and giving them both the finger?)
I'm thinking maybe I could make an extended partition and move one or more of the Vista/Lenovo partitions in there, but I'm not sure if they could boot.
I could move the non-bootable Vista/Lenovo partition into an extended partition, but I'm worried that vista would detect the change and go nuts...
Any thoughts?
PS... why can't laptop manufacturers make life for linux users easy? EVER?