Pre-Installation steps

Backup/Rescue CD Set

The preinstalled WinXP on most modern Thinkpads comes with a software to create rescue discs. It can be found in the "Access IBM" section of the Windows menu. I recommend to create a set of rescue discs before you repartition the drive. When you create the rescue discs, use a CD-R for the first volume (it's only 280 Megs) and then DVD-R. Otherwise you will end up with seven CD-Rs. Alternatively IBM offers shipment of a pack of rescue disks if you call the support hotline. Or try to create the rescue CDs on your own.

The copy of Windows that came with your machine cannot be legally transferred to any other machine. Leave the license sticker intact for when the machine is sold, or if you just have to dual boot.

Resizing your Windows Partition

If you want to keep your WinXP partition and you do not want to shell out lots of money for PartitionMagic, you can use ntfsresize. I recommend booting Kanotix or Knoppix, getting it online and using the latest version to be found at the ntfsresize link because the CD linuxes tend to come with slightly out-dated versions. Be sure not to forget to resize your Windows partition (e.g. with cfdisk) AFTER having resized ntfs and TAKE CARE not to make the partition smaller than you made the ntfs. If you like it safe and smooth you can also take a look at the program "qtparted" which reportedly takes care of ntfsresize and partition table changing in one go and allows you to adjust partition sizes in a GUI. But I have not tested this software personally.

Please be carefull before taking the following steps. I suggest that you should create rescue and product recovery CDs (6 CDS will be required) before going for the following so that if anything goes wrong you can go back to the factory setting using those CDs.

Moving the Recovery partition using a Linux rescue system

On newer models (i.e. the T43) the preinstalled HDD has two partitions; the first one containing the OS and second one having the rescue files used to boot the machine when Access IBM button is pressed before Windows XP takes control of the laptop. One can use his Linux distros boot CD (usually the first CD) to boot into rescue mode and shift the rescue partition from the end of the HDD to somewhere in between leaving required space for Windows. This can be done in following steps:

Creating a temporary rescue partition

• Run # fdisk /dev/sda.
• Delete the 1st partition (/dev/sda1).
• Create a partion /dev/sda3 immediately before the rescue partition (/dev/sda2) with exactly the same number of cylinders as the rescue partition.
• Save the partition table and quit fdisk. Reboot.

Hint:

To be on the safe side, reboot the machine everytime the partition table is modified and saved using fdisk from linux rescue mode.

• rawcopy the contents of /dev/sda2 to /dev/sda3 with

# dd if=/dev/sda2 of=/dev/sda3

Creating the rescue partition in its final position

• Run # fdisk /dev/sda.
• Delete the rescue partiton /dev/sda2 (we just backed it up to /dev/sda3).
• Create a partion /dev/sda2 immediately after the space you want to leave for Windows. Note that this new partition again should have exactly the same number of cylinders as the rescue partition (now /dev/sda3).
• Save the partition table and quit fdisk. Reboot.
• rawcopy the contents of /dev/sda3 to the newly created /dev/sda2:

# dd if=/dev/sda3 of=/dev/sda2

• Run # fdisk /dev/sda.
• Delete the temporary rescue partiton /dev/sda3 (we just copied it to /dev/sda2)
• Save the partition table and quit fdisk.
• Reboot the machine and press Access IBM Button to restore the Windows XP from the rescue partition. Windows XP will occupy only the space available before the new rescue partition.

Once Windows XP is recovered follow the standard mechanism for installing Linux in the available free space at the end of the HDD. If you have created Rescue and Product Recovery CDs, then the Rescue Partition also can be deleted at this stage to make more room for your Linux installation.

Alternative Method: Dual Booting and retaining ThinkVantage Utility

Note: T60 2913 with 60 GB drive

The key here is to find a bootable CD version of Linux that has the PartEd package on it (preferrably with qtparted also). I used SystemRescueCd (http://www.sysresccd.org/Main_Page). I've read people say to defrag Windows, but according to the PartEd website, the PartEd resize command (http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/manual/parted.html#resize) will take care of all that. Now boot with the SystemRescueCd and when you get the prompt, press F2. This will list available images. I used fb1024, because I wanted to use qtparted (graphical, fb1024 is framebuffer at 1024x768 vs fb800 is framebuffer at 800x600, etc), not parted (commandline).

What I saw was a 3 partition device sda. Only touch the NTFS partition (sda1 on mine, should be on yours if it is factory settings). You do not want to move the VFAT at the end of the device nor touch that little section (sda-1) at the beginning. I resized sda1 (NTFS) down to 20 GB, what you should see is the the New Size + the Free Space After = Old Size of sda1. Click the commit under the file menu to write the changes. That's it.

I then rebooted with Fedora Core 5 disk 1 and used Anaconda and its utilities to partition the free space to be a 20 GB mount point "/", a 512 MB swap, and a 10 GB vfat, these could have been done using qtparted, or pretty much any distro's install. The swap and vfat were shown inside a logical partition. I set up GRUB in the MBR and clicked the GRUB advanced setup checkbox. This allowed me to add entries, in addition to Linux, for GRUB. I added the NTFS (Windows) partition and the VFAT (ThinkVantage partition, not the 10 GB I created, cuz that would be silly).

The results are: on boot, the post screen tells you to press the ThinkVantage button and....it does nothing, but once GRUB starts, press the key GRUB tells you to which shows the boot list, and there you have Linux, Windows, and ThinkVantage. I tried it and I can boot into all 3. When you first boot into Windows, you may get a chkdisk (I did), but it should be fine.

A word of warning. Be careful, I've heard some people say GRUB in the MBR while dual booting WinXP can result in false positives from virus software, but I didn't have that issue. Also, be very careful about the resize of the NTFS partition with qtparted. Any change in the placement of the start of the pre-existing partitions, and all bets are off. I'm just saying this because I don't know what might happen if Windows isn't where it wants to be. Also I think the placement of the ThinkVantage utility on the disk is very important from my reading. However, since pressing the ThinkVantage at POST doesn't do anything, I may have screwed that up, but with GRUB pointing at that VFAT, I can still get to the ThinkVantage utilities, so I'm happy.