[aitese]

Hi all. I was interested in installing Jolicloud or one of the other Linux distros as soon my Windows 7 RC licence will run out and I'll have to stump up for a full licence. I figured I'd test the waters a little more before committing to anything.

Now, after I installed Windows 7 the first time I had a little trouble with the video drivers so wanted to revert back to XP. I knew there was a restore partition but discovered the Win7 install had overwritten my access to it (ctrl+F11 at the "www.dell.com" screen). I eventually got it back using the guide on this site:

Inside the Dell PC Restore Partition

Eventually proper GMA500 drivers were released and I have a working Win7 install with the option to factory restore XP whenever I feel like. I repeated my scare again when I tried to duel boot with Ubuntu NBR and GRUB decided it would hang around even after I uninstalled it. Again, the above site saved me.

Now, as I've said, I'd like to once again try my luck with a Linux distro (the video support on UNBR was WOEFUL) but would like to avoid scaring the life out of myself by preserving the restore partition and being able to access it.

Can anyone point me to a dual booting guide that cares about this (they all seem to not care and blitz the whole hard drive as standard) or can someone who's done this give me a hand? Much appreciated.

[reflex]

Welcome to the forums.

When screwing with OSs/bootloaders/etc, I count on my own drive image backups instead of trying to preserve the Dell restore partition. So, I don't know what goes into preserving it. Good luck.