Hi,

Im a new user Linux user, and I'm having some difficulty in installing the Fedora 3 core on My Laptop (Sony Vaio VGN A 130 B).

My laptop currently has a Windows XP Pro OS; which is installed in a 5 GB space (Recovery wizard). The remaining 33 GB is split b/w C and D drives. I have tried resizing my HDD to give the C drive 10 GB for my program files only; and the rest to D drive for my other files. I have had a lot of grief in resizing my partition.

I have tried:

1. Formatting my HDD and installing a XP from a bootable CD, and not from the recovery wizard. This failed as the new Windows did not detect most of my drivers. I have to now use the Win XP from the Sony recovery wizard.

2. Re-installing windows from the recovery wizard: I cannot split the HDD in a windows environment. I've tried using partition magic and a bunch of other s/w which do not actually resize my HDD in their 'demo' mode. Do I have to purchase any resizing s/w or is there any other alternative?

I'm sure that if I have any luck resizing my HDD; I would not have much trouble in installing the Fedora 3 core.

I'll appreciate any help!

Regards,

Kuldip

hey Kuldip,

I feel your pain, as I have a Sony VAIO r505 laptop which I worked to get my linux running properly on (which now runs flawlessly).


Sony likes to be stupid and uses weird drivers for almost all of your hardware, so you will likely have to reinstall with just the normal XP cd, then go to the Sony Support site and download and install all of the drivers for your computer (like Display adapter, keyboard, mouse, network adapter, modem, etc etc). After that it should work fine.

Many Linux installers actually come with a disk formatter/partition editor so you can also use that. I managed to put both Fedora Core 2 and then Fedora Core 3 on my laptop without incident, as it seems Linux supports Sony products better than Windoze does (ironic considering Sony Help Line told me my laptop didnt even support windows Xp pro...stupid jerks).

But once you install the individual drivers from the sony support site (go through vaio.net) everything should work out fine, and then just use Disk Management Console in XP or the Linux installer's own disk partitioner to do the rest.

welcome to linux

I think as soon as you install linux, the windows recovery system is going to start giving you hard time. Your linux will probably work, but when u get into windows the recovery system is gonna start every time. I don't know for sure, but that's what happened to me a couple of times. Good luck partitioning....

Hi Excidy & BigMac:

Thanks for the suggestions! And sorry for replying so late.

I managed to install the core without formatting; so the recovery wiz is still installed. I used partition magic to reduce the size of my C drive (to store all my windows pgm files) and have some unformatted disk space for the Linux install.

I havent been able to config my wireless internet card though :-(

I guess its still early stages for me; so I'll have to transition slowly.

KK