dell 5100 diag/fat32 part

BigNate · 09-23-2003, 04:47 PM

has anyone deleted the dell diagnostic partition on an Inspiron 5100. (or any dell for that matter) and if so did it do anything to the laptop? I want rid of it as I'll never use it unless it is a quasi-bios as I initally suspected.

Guru3 · 11-02-2003, 10:58 AM

I have put RH9 on two dell laptops. A Inspiron 8100 and a Latitude C400, completely wiping out the initial Windows XP installs. I haven't had any problems with the filesystem so I think it should be OK. Plus, doesn't dell have a windows executable that makes 2 floppies for you to boot off of if you want to run diagnostics anyway? If you delete the partition, I THINK it will be OK, but it's ultimately up to you.

BigNate · 11-02-2003, 12:58 PM

Right on. I'll be doing a fresh install when fedora hits 1.0 so I'll wipe it then. If any ill happens I'll post back. If there is no post consider it safe.

Ginux · 11-02-2003, 04:42 PM

No problem, you can wipe the partition with no risk... it just has the diagnostics that comes with the icluded CD "resource and diagnostics or device drivers" [I don't remember], just boot with that CD and the diags will start.
I remember a way to restore the partion as well, but I can't remember how...

Ginux

BigNate · 11-02-2003, 09:28 PM

Thanks!