[lug] stupid MSDN Q

[John Karns]

I don't have direct experience with this, although I do have a set of MSDN
CD's lying around, I think they use a format they refer to as "compiled
html" (.chm extension, if I remember).  Anyway, I would suggest trying the
following:

- make a copy of the boot partition via dd onto floppy

- backup the Linux partition(s)

- delete the linux partitions via Linux fdisk

- install W98 to the available partition

- restore boot partition from floppy via dd

I believe that the content of the deleted Linux partitions should remain
intact during the process, provided you don't change the size of the W98
partition to allow over-writing the Linux partition space.

If you try this, I'd be interested in hearing how it works.

P.S. FYI, ignoring the i840 compatibility problem that you mention for the
sake of discussion, VMWare is offering a version called VMWare Express
which they are selling for $49, so the price issue has changed.

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John Karns                                        jkarns at csd.net


On Sun, 2 Sep 2001, D. Stimits said:

> I'm trying to read an MSDN CD while working on porting some software. My
> 2nd machine has the first partition open so I can install Win 98 on
> that, but it is telling me I have to delete all the non-win partitions
> (or so it seems to be saying...it won't actually tell me *which*
> partition it has to delete) before it'll even attempt to install win.
> This makes me fear partition delete, since it won't tell which
> partition. This in turn means I can't install 98 on that machine, and
> therefore, I have no chance of making my MSDN CD available while I'm
> working (I'd have to reboot to win to read a page, then reboot back to
> linux to code, reboot back to win to see MSDN, reboot again, so on, so
> forth, yuck, argh, moan, groan). I want to know if anyone has heard of a
> way to read MSDN (MS's equivalent to man pages) while in Linux? Has
> anyone heard of such a project, or would I simply have to reverse
> engineer this myself if I want to read MSDN pages from Linux? (I don't
> have vmware, can't afford it, don't want it, it has problems running on
> i840 SMP chipset motherboards)