• From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,865

Topic: You tend to forget...

...just what a nice little universe the FOSS world is. I'm fixing up my mom's new computer, that came with Win7 preinstalled, and the whole thing is extremely frustrating. It took me a while to uninstall all the junk, because it was integrated into the system so that you had to reboot for every single reinstall, and now I'm having a blast trying to setup online banking for her company.

They're using a prehistoric ActivCard USB reader, Windows of course doesn't have that particular antiquated driver, and the bank's .pdf file with dl links to their driver is hosted on a server that is currently down (it's probably running on Windows), so I gotta hunt down the driver on a bunch of obscure sites, all of which which seem to wanna make you register before you can download it. Furthermore, even if I do install the driver, the service will be useless, because I have to import an SSL certificate (of course, the site runs only in IE), and that ain't gonna happen with their server being down, because that's the only source of legitimate drivers and certificates!!!

I mean, none of these things is unfixable, but how much easier is it to point a package manager to a repository and have everything done for you in three minutes flat?!

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  • From: Kowloon
  • Registered: 2011-10-13
  • Posts: 407

Re: You tend to forget...

I think people who love Windows must love rebooting for every install, also the pain of not having a package manager. smile

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  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,865

Re: You tend to forget...

It's not Windows this time, it's the proprietary junk that gets bundled with it. I've done a fair share of retail Windows installs, and it's not bad, but the shit they do to the OEM images (and that you can't really purge) is astounding.

Oh, yeah, the partitioning scheme, lol,

primary partition, 200 MB, for "System reserved" or whatever.
450 GB for primary Windows
15 GB for OEM partition (that's the restore one I guess)
Extended partition for the rest
    -- logical with 20 GB for drivers

Now I gotta figure out how the Windows partition manager (which only lets me resize the main partition to 200 GB, lolol) moves the empty space around, because I won't be able to assign it to a logical partition otherwise. I'm considering doing all of this with Gparted, not caring if I'll bork the system.

Last edited by el_koraco (2011-11-26 17:51:59)

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  • From: 36.0718,-119.03519
  • Registered: 2011-06-19
  • Posts: 350

Re: You tend to forget...

el_koraco wrote:

Now I gotta figure out how the Windows partition manager (which only lets me resize the main partition to 200 GB, lolol) moves the empty space around, because I won't be able to assign it to a logical partition otherwise. I'm considering doing all of this with Gparted, not caring if I'll bork the system.

Burn the Win CD/DVD as you will not be able to after you bork it. (been there and annoyed by that)

My OEM BIOS is locked also not allowing much more than Boot  Order.  mad

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  • Registered: 2011-11-25
  • Posts: 23

Re: You tend to forget...

Sounds like a proper mess, good luck!

Those experiences are vital, like you point out. Next time you sit behind your box filled with FOSS, you'll be extra happy about it being there.

/edit: forgot a word, woops.

Last edited by Goofy (2011-11-26 18:11:50)

  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,865

Re: You tend to forget...

BoredOOMM wrote:

[
Burn the Win CD/DVD as you will not be able to after you bork it. (been there and annoyed by that)

My OEM BIOS is locked also not allowing much more than Boot  Order.  mad

Good one. So, I'll have to go out and buy a DVD, sweet. Haven't done that in four or five years...

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  • Registered: 2011-06-13
  • Posts: 218

Re: You tend to forget...

Take all this and pair it with the idea that the copy of Windows is pirated. That's the case with my mother's laptop. She also does that ebanking thing with a USB card reader, and stuff, which works. Mostly. She said she wants to try Linux sometime (sometime...), but I don't think it's possible to set it up without Windows in a VM at least.
Good luck with the setup...

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  • Thorny
  • #! CrunchBanger
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  • Registered: 2011-05-19
  • Posts: 113

Re: You tend to forget...

el_koraco wrote:

...
Now I gotta figure out how the Windows partition manager (which only lets me resize the main partition to 200 GB, lolol) moves the empty space around, because I won't be able to assign it to a logical partition otherwise. I'm considering doing all of this with Gparted, not caring if I'll bork the system.

Make sure it doesn't have one of those Windows ©, Dynamic Disks (which I think are something like LVM), sometimes people get into trouble trying to manipulate those types of partitions with GNU utilities.

el_koraco wrote:

So, I'll have to go out and buy a DVD, sweet. Haven't done that in four or five years...

You could dd that partition to a spare partition somewhere in order to save it. I know you know enough to have a useable backup of your Mother's system to restore from so you may not ever get into the situation where you need the restore from that partition. Is that system one that has a hotkey during boot to start the restore? If so, I suggest you leave that restore partition alone with the original partition numbering and it would continue to be available.

You'd probably be able to free up space with Windows native software and leave it un-partitioned, then step in with GNU utilities to partition and slide things around if necessary for the way you want your Crunchbang partitioned.

  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,865

Re: You tend to forget...

I don't wanna install anything else on the computer, I just don't wanna keep everything related to Windows on the main partition (the infamous C:\ "disk"). The OEM partition is the restore point, you boot it up and it wipes the whole disk, restoring it to the factory install state, which is all right. I was just amazed at the dumb partitioning scheme, it's totally brain dead.

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  • Awebb
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Re: You tend to forget...

That's why OEM sucks, that's all.

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  • Thorny
  • #! CrunchBanger
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Re: You tend to forget...

el_koraco wrote:

... The OEM partition is the restore point, you boot it up and it wipes the whole disk, restoring it to the factory install state, which is all right. ...

Hummm, the restore partition on my ASUS (only recent stuff I have), only restored the Windows partition (the first one), I actually tested, it restored a Windows install back to factory default (no users on it yet - OEM setup) on first partition (one I had shrunk to obtain space for GNU), leaving it at the size I shrunk it to, leaving the other partitioning I had done for GNU alone. It did not repartition the drive and it did not touch what had originally been partitioned as a Windows "D" drive for data but which I reformatted. I still haven't used the Windows

Last edited by Thorny (2011-11-27 14:09:07)

  • Awebb
  • #! Die-hard
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Re: You tend to forget...

OEM = garbage. That's a general rule in the commercial world.

My 7" Android tablet from Vodafone was slow as hell and had a very depressing battery time. After getting rid of most of those "features" by installing a naked android, it almost doubled the battery time and made the system very responsive. The only thing I missed was the Samsung print software (I have a Samsung network printer), but there is an application in the store that does this too. I can't hit "print" in the browser anymore, but now I can scan as well. There was so much Samsung stuff no one needs and so much Vodafone buymebuyme ads, that the thing became slow as fsck. Thanks, Samsung and Vodafone, for making a good gadget a pile of crap.

My Asus netbook came with a Windows 7 Starter 32bit and some sort of a quickly booting Linux on a special partition, that couldn't handle itself. The special boot linux required a certain partitioning outside the normal MBR universe, so I could either kill that quick linux thingy or stay with Windows. The only sad thing is, that there is no proper way of telling the system, that the second power button should be used for a certain boot partition... no, it's hardcoded. Oh, and that windows starter is the most disgusting excuse for an operating system I've ever seen. Thank you, Asus, for making me tinker with Linux, instead of using the device I payed so much money for.

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  • Unia
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  • Registered: 2010-07-17
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Re: You tend to forget...

Awebb wrote:

My 7" Android tablet from Vodafone was slow as hell and had a very depressing battery time. After getting rid of most of those "features" by installing a naked android, it almost doubled the battery time and made the system very responsive. T

Off topic: what ROM is that? big_smile

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  • Thorny
  • #! CrunchBanger
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  • Registered: 2011-05-19
  • Posts: 113

Re: You tend to forget...

Awebb wrote:

...
My Asus netbook came with a Windows 7 Starter 32bit and some sort of a quickly booting Linux on a special partition, that couldn't handle itself. The special boot linux required a certain partitioning outside the normal MBR universe, so I could either kill that quick linux thingy or stay with Windows. The only sad thing is, that there is no proper way of telling the system, that the second power button should be used for a certain boot partition... no, it's hardcoded. ...

Well, that partition identifies as EFI but it really is a scratchpad for keeping track of what hardware configuration the system has. It exists so the system can bypass the BIOS hardware discovery at boot time and thus acheive a bit faster boot (called boot booster or something like that). It works and I left mine to work but just bypassing the BIOS discovery is only marginally faster on modern equipment.

  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,865

Re: You tend to forget...

Awebb wrote:

That's why OEM sucks, that's all.

That's how most people use the computer, all the time, scary. I'm considering persuading my mom to buy another retail copy of Windows, this is just too shitty.

@Thorny, you may be right, I was assuming the whole disk would get wiped clean, but if only the Windows system partition is reimaged, that isn't quite so bad. Though the model of not giving you an OEM DVD with Windows, but this moronic OEM partition, is one of the nastier things to come about recently.

I still can't figure out why the shitforbrains Windows disk management tool can't shrink C: by more than 200 GB, when only 15 GB is actually used, and the whole partition is 450 GB, but whatever.

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  • pvsage
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  • From: Section Six
  • Registered: 2009-10-18
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Re: You tend to forget...

el_koraco wrote:
Awebb wrote:

That's why OEM sucks, that's all.

That's how most people use the computer, all the time, scary. I'm considering persuading my mom to buy another retail copy of Windows, this is just too shitty.

I remember on an XP box I had a while ago, there was an install.exe buried somewhere in the Windows directory structure that re-installed a more-or-less non-OEM version of XP.  Perhaps there's a similar installer within Win7?

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  • Unia
  • #! Die-hard
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  • Registered: 2010-07-17
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Re: You tend to forget...

el_koraco wrote:

I still can't figure out why the shitforbrains Windows disk management tool can't shrink C: by more than 200 GB, when only 15 GB is actually used, and the whole partition is 450 GB, but whatever.

You can use a GParted LiveCD for this

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  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,865

Re: You tend to forget...

el_koraco wrote:

I still can't figure out why the shitforbrains Windows disk management tool can't shrink C: by more than 200 GB, when only 15 GB is actually used, and the whole partition is 450 GB, but whatever.

I don't think so. The whole point of the OEM partitions is that you don't get to make a clean reinstall, you gotta pull in all their junk along. Lenovo Camera Suite. McAffee Antivirus 30 Days Trial. Other Stuff To Sit In Tray.

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  • Thorny
  • #! CrunchBanger
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  • Registered: 2011-05-19
  • Posts: 113

Re: You tend to forget...

el_koraco wrote:

...
@Thorny, you may be right, I was assuming the whole disk would get wiped clean, but if only the Windows system partition is reimaged, that isn't quite so bad. Though the model of not giving you an OEM DVD with Windows, but this moronic OEM partition, is one of the nastier things to come about recently.

We can only say the way the model I used was configured, there is no evidence yet that all ASUS or even any other models of ASUS are done the same and certainly not necessarily the same for other manufacturers. I shrunk the first partition to 50G to leave room for W7 and when I restored it, it automagically restored to that 50G partition, not touching the others (so I assumed it was coded with volume number, nothing about size or other partitions) I think it would only restore the Windows to OEM setup. That doesn't mean the system you have would work the same. I only tested so I could leave the Windows on there while under warranty, the system is for someone else.

el_koraco wrote:

I still can't figure out why the shitforbrains Windows disk management tool can't shrink C: by more than 200 GB, when only 15 GB is actually used, and the whole partition is 450 GB, but whatever.

Did you verify that it isn't one of those Windows "dynamic disks" that I mentioned? I've really only read about them, no experience but I think dynamic has to be taken off (must be some native app for it) before it can be resized. I don't even know where to look, haven't used Windows since Win98.

Additional thought: Could it be a static size Windows paging file, holding on to the space.

Second additional thought: You did defrag before trying, eh? If you already deleted things there could be unused space between files on the disk, I don't know how the Windows apps would handle that.

Last edited by Thorny (2011-11-27 17:31:14)

  • From: inside Ed
  • Registered: 2011-07-25
  • Posts: 2,865

Re: You tend to forget...

I have no idea to be honest. Windows has some weird names for the partition modes. As far as I can tell, no logical volume management is present, because otherwise it would allow me to create other types of partition than primary. I'll look at the documentation some more. I did run CC Cleaner on the registry, and most of the crap is purged, so the system has become fairly responsive. I just gotta study the partitions some more. I loled a little on the "help" menu, which proposed CLI solutions for most problems.

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  • Awebb
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Re: You tend to forget...

Unia wrote:

Off topic: what ROM is that? big_smile

It's a hacked Cyanogenmod. Yes... it's the hack of a hack. I'm still waiting for Cyanogenmod to support the Galaxy Tab -.-

Last edited by Awebb (2011-11-27 20:15:22)

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  • From: Philadelphia
  • Registered: 2011-05-09
  • Posts: 312

Re: You tend to forget...

Awebb wrote:

That's why OEM sucks, that's all.

Yea, I'm a fan of ASUS hardware, but what bloatware, wow.

Makes you wish it was Gateway and 1997 again, at least in the states, where you would get a Windows install with the install disk, none of this recovery partition nonsense.

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  • From: 36.0718,-119.03519
  • Registered: 2011-06-19
  • Posts: 350

Re: You tend to forget...

el_koraco wrote:

I don't wanna install anything else on the computer, I just don't wanna keep everything related to Windows on the main partition (the infamous C:\ "disk"). The OEM partition is the restore point, you boot it up and it wipes the whole disk, restoring it to the factory install state, which is all right. I was just amazed at the dumb partitioning scheme, it's totally brain dead.

  There are two partitions

- Windows

- Restore

I stupidly resized Windows as the drive is 500 GB and did not create new partition behind Restore .   I used it connected to usb for storage for a few weeks and when I attempted to restore, it would not find - Restore from BIOS.  It was easier to shove a new install over it all than move everything around again.   BIOS complained but after install #! it simply reminds me of branding.

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  • Registered: 2009-01-07
  • Posts: 306

Re: You tend to forget...

el_koraco wrote:

...just what a nice little universe the FOSS world is. I'm fixing up my mom's new computer, that came with Win7 preinstalled, and the whole thing is extremely frustrating. It took me a while to uninstall all the junk, because it was integrated into the system so that you had to reboot for every single reinstall, and now I'm having a blast trying to setup online banking for her company.

Personally I advice not using window OS for online banking unless you are a geek/security expert.
See

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/157767,ns … nking.aspx
http://www.millennium-technology.com/?p=801
http://www.esecurityplanet.com/views/ar … us-Mix.htm

Teach her how to use a liunx liveCD when she needs to do online banking.  Does she needs
flash and/or java?  If so, I recommend linux mint, pinguy OS, ultimate OS, or some other
distros that have flash and java preinstalled.  Some think #! is too geeky - others don't - she
needs to decide for herself.   Give her several linux liveCD and let her try them.

Sheng-Chieh

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  • From: Fayetteville, Arkansas
  • Registered: 2011-04-25
  • Posts: 150

Re: You tend to forget...

el_koraco wrote:

It's not Windows this time, it's the proprietary junk that gets bundled with it.

That was much of the deciding factor when I bought my netbook.