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[chickenman]

Well I want to install Linux on my new PC, the only problem is that the last time I installed Linux (ubuntu) my OEM Restore CD's would not work, now I don't know if this was caused by Linux but when booting with it I had errors like "cannot find mstools.exe" and the one that made it all shutdown "operating system < 0".

My new PC is the same make as my old one (Packard Bell) and I've not long ago made a restore DVD for it, what I want to know is would it be safe to install Linux on it, because I don't want to have to go out, and buy a ?60-80 XP CD.

Someone also said that it may have been caused by a restore partition being deleted by Linux, I have two partitions on my XP machine as made by default by the OEM DVD, Disk management show they hold a total amount of 149.04GB the HDD is labeld as a 160GB and windows can show it differnt by a number of GB's, also is not some space used like swap space in XP ?.

Anyways I have deleted these two partitions using fdisk and XP reinstalls fine, so all I what to know is will the OEM DVD remain ok even if the HDD has been wiped (MBR and all partitions).

One last thing, can / how do I resize a NTFS partition from Windows XP home SP2 without loss of Data.