Systemcommander 2000/Deluxe - a superdeluxe bootloader -

Update juni 2003: I will not update this page and have not since 2001. Some might find it usefull for the tips and tricks, which is why I do not delete it. hc

Tips and tricks --what it can and cannot do.

• Although SC2000 costs money, it makes your life with linux and NT/2000 a lot easier: you can boot linux and NT/2000 on the same machine as lilo can, but also make, format resize and copy linux partitions with all the data on it (and NT and w98/95 partitions)!! You can do this in a graphical windows-like environment. Unlike partition magic there is no need to start up windows everytime.
• Learn how System Commander 2000/deluxe can help to install and maintain linux, windows and NT/2000
• Get information on what sc2000 cannot do from a critical consumer.
• SCD and SC2000 are superb for installing multiple windows 98/95 partitions and systems on one disk and thus for backup reasons. Superfast!

Contents System commander deluxe / System commander 2000 review and tips

What is covered in this paper
What is it? | What is it good at? | What is it not good at? | Together with partition magic and linux | Safety: how to be not stupid | Tricks for windows 98/95 | Tricks for linux | Tricks for windows nt | Installing dos | Tricks for netware | Windows 2000? never heard of it. |

What is covered in this paper?

First, system commander deluxe and system commander 2000 are products of V Communications. You should go to their site for official updates, faqs and so on. They have made more bootloaders and my tips and tricks might not work with all other v-communiations products.
This page is both for system commander deluxe, upgraded to 4.03 and SC2000. There are also system commander for upgrading to windows 98. I do not know what parts of this paper can be used for this. If you do know more then the official site shows, let me know!
Having said this, I thought I might share some of my mostly good experiences with this program for those that want to use it. So you can see what it can and cannot do.

What is it?

System commander deluxe and system commander 2000 are bootloaders and partitioning programs. SC2000 is the newer version of SCD. I always worked with SCD so that is why much of these pages is about SCD. However, many of the tips and tricks will work for SC2000. I will add comments if I have tested tricks with sc2000.

A bootloader is a program that installs itself in the master bootrecord of your harddisk, and that enables you to install and choose between different operating systems, such as windows98/95/NT/2000; linux; Novell Netware and so on. A partition program helps you to partition your hard-disks (make different parts your computer sees as different disks) and also to format these partitions with the file-system format that goes with the OS. Windows98/95 uses FAT and FAT32, windows nt uses FAT or ntfs; netware has its own system I do not know the name of; linux uses ext2 and a swap system, but there are also other filesystems for linux.

SCD was not very well suited for linux, but sc2000 is. SC2000 features:
- Making, formatting and resizing linux ext2 partitions (and swap)
- Resizing fat and fat32 and even nt's ntfs
- Copying partitions. This amounts in a good way to make backups if you have lots of diskspace.
- Moving partitions
- After installing linux with lilo in the mbr, sc2000 can take over again. I still have test if this works easily though.
- Apparently system commander can work under linux without windows so say the manuals. Perhaps I mis-understood, but I will try that I hope next week.

So if this all is true and works, and I think it is and does, sc2000 is a not-too expensive (50 dollar for the download version with manual in pdf format) next generation bootloader and partitioning program worth the money if you ask me. Of course you dont really need it for an install where you dont want to spend any money. But if you want luxurious and reliable graphic tools to do all partitioning and stuff, and bootloading SC2000 might just be what you need.

Do I get paid by v-com? Wish I was (that means no :-)). I am just enthousiastic. To prove they do not pay me: Resizing an NT-server partition went wrong with sc2000 once on one of my systems although it still booted fine. The partition was the only logic ntfs partition of 2 gig in an extended partition on the second ide disk. The problem is not usual since I later tried to rezise an NT partition in the extended part of a second ide harddisk but all went well and it re-sized ok. I rescued the data from the erromous session fine (although no rescue was needed but I wanted to test) by dumping a norton ghost image on a new non-formatted ntfs partition made with sc2000 at the same place on the same disk. So the data was never destroyed, but the prorgam did make a mistake (have not heard from v-com although i reported the mistake).

The good: what it excells at.

System commander 2000 is a good graphical solution for linux users coming from windows 98/95. I will talk about sc2000 first, but you must understand that sc2000 can do all what SCD does, and more. So the good of SCD is also the good of sc2000. However I will not write down everything twice, so you will have to check out the SCD section as well if you are interested in sc2000 only.

System Commander 2000
In short:

- Great for linux because you can resize, move and copy (linux) partitions with data in it on the fly. On top of that you can easily combine booting linux on the same computer with windows NT/2000 and 98/95. You can prepare your linux partitions for a linux installation in the conveniant windows environment. For the advanced linux user sc2000 can be used to boot a whole bunch of linuxes, in combination with lilo. In combination with norton ghost you can use ghost to dump back your backups in no-time.

- For NT/W2000 users SC2000 is useful because you can resize, copy and move your partitions. Copy a partition means you can make a very easy backup of a working system. Combined with Norton ghost you can make a NT partition, dump a ghost over it and your backup (which you can keep anywhere) is restored. Norton ghost 6 will take care of the PID problem. You can also boot more versions and nt systems, but you can also do that with the NT bootloader. However, without sc2000 NT does not give you the possibility to copy a partition or back it up, certainly not in a graphical program. You can make new partitions with NT of course.

System commander 2000 can do what system commander deluxe already excelled at: booting multiple windows 98/95 partitions, so you can preserve and restore your working windows system by just copying files (see tricks below). This achieves a functionality you could only achieve with norton ghost in the past. You can do anything with fat and fat32 partitions you want, without loosing data, and fast. Never again dispare because windows 98 crashes on you after you installed yet another program. Once set up properly you own your computer again ! You can surive any windows crash because you preserved a working system and will have it working in no-time.

For the real geek sc2000 is one of those tools you get to love. It is one of these things you really dont mind paying for. Boot into netware, nt, 2000, various linuxes, beos, bsd, windows and dosses. Partitioning on the fly. Why do it the hard way!

Sc2000 has really solved most problems of SCD: you can move partitions and resize partitions with the windows NT filesystem, the linux filesystem and of course the windows 95.98 filesystems. This means you can partition your drive (including linux partitions) without loosing the data on it with a graphical tool. Sc2000 has a manual you also get when you download the cheapest version (50 dollar).

For NT users and linux users sc2000 is a real solution because the NT and linux-filesystems can be resized and moved. For linux users this means that if you want linux next to your windows system, sc2000 is ideal. You can first re-size the windows partitions you have, you won't have problems with lilo when you install linux the usual way, and you can resize your linux partitions when you realize after a while that your partitioning was not the way you want it (for beginners this is usually the case). Also getting a bigger partition in linux has now become trivial (without sc2000 it still is a major pain in the as). But if you start adding partitions manually in sc2000 before your first linux partition (unless that linux partition is the first partition in the extended partitionspace and your linux swap file the next) you will get in undocumented trouble (see the bad below).
Also you can make beos partitions, but not format them.
You can copy partitions with all the data involved. This is really a good way to back up your system to for instance a second disk, or to multiply your windows nt system into two similar systems (but you must manually adjust the boot.ini file)
Check out the next section for what SCD can, sc2000 can also do with windows systems.

System commander deluxe
System commander deluxe cannot do everything, but what it does, it does extremely well. So what does it do?
The bootloader functions of SCD are easy to navigate in. You can add, copy and adjust the partitions that show up in your boot-up screen. You can also set a password and a timer so that a standard OS boots up after x seconds. SCD also checks for boot viruses, although I never had one.

You can re-install SCD after windows has overwritten the master boot record by running scin.exe. This is really a good feature, because it saved my computer once when a power failure had corrupted the boot sectors. Also you need this since windows installations tend to over-write the boot sector. It can also convert fat to fat 32.

What I like most about SCD is the partition manager. You can make partitions really fast if you turn of disk checking. Really fast in less then 10 seconds. You can make a fat/ fat32 partition, and format it in less then 10 seconds. You can also resize fat and fat32 partitions with data on it. I have never-ever found any corruption while doing this, using SCD over three years.
That might seem trivial, until I tell you that with partition magic 4 I have lost partitions with data more then once. I must say that SCD is more professional than partition magic because you can adjust far more and you dont have yto boot in and out of windows all the time. And the closer you can get to the actual data, the better you can let the program do what you really want.

The second thing I really love is that you can restore windows systems in a breeze once you use the tricks as I line them up below. Just copy files to restore your old system That is super-cool.

The bad, what is does not do very good

System Commander 2000
System commander 2000 does a lot of things good. What is not good:
It cannot format windows NT ntfs partitions. It can create a ntfs partition, and re-size one that is already formatted, but not format them. I do not know why. This way you still have to go into NT to format, which is a drag (takes forever if you are in a hurry). Anyway, if you use norton ghost to make a back-up of your ntfs filesystem, and you put back your image over a non-formatted ntfs partition made by sc2000 it will be restored (you might have to start up a few times while windows nt restores some files that have to do with the filesystem). At least this worked for me.

It cannot transform ntfs to fat32. Although advertisement claims this is possible, and the readme.txt say you can upgrade to a version that can, the new upgrade is no-where to be found at this time (februari 20 2000). I sure hope they will amend this real soon.

--- This problem has been solved on februari 23 2000. ---

You cannot format beos partitions, although you can create them.There is also no information as to how to install beos. But with the new free beos out there soon, this wont be a problem I think.

You cannot directly resize the extended partion downward if there is data in it. Even partition magic 4 could do that. There is a roundabout way of doing that but that is not described in the manual or anywhere. You can move the extended partition down and then you can resize it. A lack of description of this by v-com is really very strange.

The manual is not online. I think this is stupid in this century. There are als no www-chatboxes and so on on the official site where you can get help. I really do not understand why. If they would like to get into the linux hype, you would certainly think there would be places where users can advise each other.

The manual generally is not well written, especially if you are using it to find out about linux support. It seems the people that wrote the manual do not really care for linux. This is really a big opportunity lost. I must add that they have a lot of functionality for linux in their wizards: you can easily add linux without knowing anything about partitions. However, if you delete partitions, will it still work? I do not think so because you would have to adjust the fstab and lilo.conf file. (I have not tried, to be honest). What happens when you want to install a new linux, and then delete the old linux partitions?
Generally speaking the manual seems to be written from a perspective of a programmer of system commander. While it is accurate and covers about everything it is just damn hard to find stuff. Also many bits are just too short: too much is not well explained: they do explain how a disk works, but not step by step what happens is you install linux with lilo in the master boot record. There are some confusing parts about loading a MBR with lilo on it in such a case, but more in a sense that they are proud that this is possible. I could not understand what would happen. Not practical. There should be a big chapter on linux. Usually when you try in out it works fine, but the manual does not explicitly give you that impression. So their manual is not very good.

I think sc2000 is ok when you just plan to install linux ones next to your windows partitions. But if you start to add or delete any partitions before your linux partition you might see trouble. At least the manual does not ensure you won't. Since such problems are really easy to overcome (adjusting the fstab and lilo.conf file), the manual should include such solutions and problems.
It cannot install linux automatically on the second drive or in the extended partition. You can do so manually.
The program insist on a boot-up disk from linux when you want to automatically install, while most linuxes can boot from cd. Apparently V-com doesn't know this.
You cannot format linux swapfiles: and the error message comments that you can only format fat and fat32 with sc2000: this is not true of course. Seems there is some old code hanging around.

System Commander Deluxe
--This part was written before sc2000 existed-------
While SCD does many things very good; I never lost any data while using it extensively, it does not do all. What it lacks is real linux support (but sc2000 fixes that), a clear manual, an online manual and moving partitions (sc2000 fixes that too).

First it lacks linux support. Although SCD will work fine with linux, if you install lilo in the boot record of the ext2 partition, it cannot partition the linux filesystem ext2 and linux swap. It also cannot resize it. It can make a partition, but not format it, nor can it make linux swap partition. (You need sc2000 to do that)
The lilo thing is really important. Lilo often cannot boot when it is placed after 2 megs or so on the disk. System commander would be clever if it could solve this problem, and boot lilo anyway. Alas, no such luck with SCD. Sc2000 can do this.

Second, SCD cannot move partitions. SC2000 can, but SCD cannot. This is a real nuisance when you resize a partition but are left with multiple places with space on your disk that are too small to be useful.

Thirdly, the manual is not online. I am sure this has to do with trying to prevent copying, but it is a nuisance to those that have paid, like me. Then give me a password or something. But no manual online is really not from this century. When you buy the product online, like I would like to since sending it to Europe is really expensive, you should be able to download a manual. Really, using system commander without the manual leaves you with only half a product, because you cannot find out all advanced features without it. SC2000 does have a manual, but still not online, although you get it in pdf format when you download sc2000.

Also when you ask the sales people what a product can do, since the web pages are not that clear, you are guaranteed to be ignored. Support is better, but they are not there to explain what a product can do. When I needed support, I did get answers.

The manual is not clear. It is good, in that it covers many things you need to know about what OS-es can do and so on. Such as pointing out that you can start windows NT from an extended partition, or even from a second hard-disk. But the many different places you have to go to in the book to find things makes clear that the book was probably formatted by many individuals. This manual really needs some severe editing. They have done their best, as shows, but they should have done much better. Making leaflets is nice, but a clear book is still better. I must say however, that for basic use of the product you do not need the manual. But when Linux or NT come into the picture, you do need it.

Some bioses ruin usability. On my old computer the bios took over some configurations in windows 95 (IRQ-s). This meant that changing some things in the windows 95 system, changed them als in the windows 98 system. This made working with SCD almost useless. More modern computers (after pentium 200) mostly do not have this. I had this problem with a HP vectra VE pentium 75.

Compatibility with linux/ partition magic / Norton utils

System Commander 2000
Where SCD was lacking support for linux (although not incompatible) SC2000 is a real linux solution (although not perfect). I know no other program (well perhaps partition magic for linux as featured by Caldera if you buy a Caldera linux cd-rom) where you can so easily re-size linux partitions, make new ones, format them and so on, as you can with SC2000. Also dual booting linux with windows 98/95 when you already had windows with sc2000 installed prior to linux is a breeze. For a moment I thought sc2000 even takes care of the famous lilo xx-cilinder boot-up problem, but it turns out it does not. I do not understand there is not even one bootloader that does this, while the solution is so simple: just launch lilo and make sure the lilo files and kernels are in the beginning of the disk. You could even just built a ramdisk or something.
I do not know about the compatibility with partition magic and sc2000, but there is really no reason why you should need partition magic when you have sc2000.

I do not know if sc2000 changes your lilo.conf and fstab.conf or even uses it when you add another linux system, or even when you delete another partition. But I do not think it does.

In short, SC2000 is a good tool for windows/linux boot configurations, and of course also for NT and so on (w2000). It cannot do magic, but for beginners it is good (automated for standard situations) , and also for advanced users that will rescue themselves and know about lilo.conf and so on. In the hands of bold beginners, not sticking to automated installation, things can go wrong when installing linux twice and so on.

System Commander Deluxe
While the manual of SCD says it is compatible with linux and partition magic, they are not lying, but also not telling the truth. As said above SCD cannot resize or format linux partitions (sc2000 can). Als when you reinstall Lilo in linux, after moving or copying a linux partition, system commander can say that the boot record has overlapping partitions. While SCD continues to work it does become impossible to work on any partitions after this warning.

I have had the same problem with partition magic 4: after using PM to resize partitions, SCD would not touch them anymore warning the boot record was not OK. So 100% compatible has its limits. If you use linux on the same disk as windows partitions, and you want to resize linux, or re-install lilo, problems can occur and I cannot recommend SCD. I do not yet have SC2000 to see if this has gotten better.

Be careful with Norton Utils. Do not use the windows checking features, because it will wreck your systems. It will connect links from different windows systems to each other when solving problems. You can use the defrag utility, disk checking, virus checking, and so on without problems.

Safety: how to be not stupid

Yes you can brake your system. Yes you can loose data. Yes you can brake things.

Don't be stupid. ALWAYS backup your data. When you work on someone elses computer, this is even more important. Before doing anything to a computers that is not for trash:

1. Have a window 98 rescue diskette. Make sure it carries fdisk and you can start up your cd-player.
2. Back-up your data
3. Have a windows 98 cd or something with which you can restore the system if all fails.
4. Have the SCD diskettes handy. Have a copy of the upgrade program.
5. Print out this manual, do not trust you can remember it when you are in panic because something does not work.
6. Don't see this or any other book/paper as absolutely right, I make typos and you can have a strange bios, and all won't work. Also I do not live in the USA, so sueing me might turn out to be difficult:-). I am also just giving amateur tips, and not serving these pages as a professional for a company.
7. Always try things that "might work but also might not" on a system you or anybody else do not need for your work and living.
8. Think before you act.
9. To restore the MBR boot up with the rescue diskette and run scin.exe from floppy- disk or hard-disk. Then do enable/update system commander. You can also use fdisk /mbr to restore a master boot record. To boot up from the first partition you need to make that bootable.

So far my wise lessons:-)

Tricks for Windows 98 and 95

If you use windows 98/95 and you want to have more then one different (windows) system to boot, SCD is the product to have (all that is said here also goes for SC2000). If you know nothing about partitions SCD will help you our and get you through automatically. The best however, is that if you have two partitions with different systems, you do not have to install windows at all. Notice that I will not give basic lessons here on system commander, but rather on what you can do with it after you know how to do basic things.

These are the tricks I was talking about. When you have a windows partition that works, with system commander installed you do not need to install windows ever again. What I usually do is this:
1. Make a basic windows 98 or 95 FAT install (all OSes can read fat), but without programs. You wont need more than 600 meg. But you can do more if you want.
2. Install SCD, boot and see if all is well. Make sure you have the latest upgrade

3. The trick is that you can add windows by just copying the files from one partition to the other. But to do so you need to be out of the windows system you are running, and you need a system without system commander installed. Their are more ways to do this, but I will do one. Use system commander to make a second windows 98/95 install in a separate partition. I know this is a drag, but it will save time later.
4. Now your second system can be used as a back-up. Back the files up somewhere (some extended partition or on a cd, or in a directory on your first partition.

What I usually do is work of the secondly installed windows system. If it stops functioning after a month or three, usually after a lot of installed programs wreck the dll's, causing blue screens, I copy back my back-uped system and start over again. You can also use one system to do word or wordperfect, and another to do photoshop or "mission critical" programs you want to have working all the time. I mention word and office suites because these make your registry file huge, and your system slow. So when you need all performance you can get, do not install them.

Using the same strategy you can make a third windows 98/95 system:
1. Make a third primary partition manually.
2. Boot up in the first windows system
3. Copy the files in the second partition to the new empty partition.
4. Reboot and SCD should see the new system. If not you can add it manually by going into alt-s when SCD boots, (remember you can do alt-o and alt-s), and select the order, add and removal menu. Do alt-a (add). Select partition and you will get a screen with all your partitions. You can scroll to the new one you just made, and alt-s will toggle it to set it to bootable.
5. Your system is ready to roll!!

This is what I mean by easy-management! This is what I like about SCD. You own the computer; not microsoft! No need to wait for hours of installing. No problem when windows 98 wrecks itself again! and again,,, and again, and again. Copy your backup and you are ready to go!

Remember, when something goes wrong, boot up with a rescue diskette and run scin.exe, and do enable/update system commander. This will re-install the master boot record.

Tricks for windows nt

Windows NT is a different issue (I refer only to NT4). To do NT juggling with SCD you first need to install dos. The same goes for Netware by the way.

One tip here: when you have a disk bigger then 8 gig, NT won't install. You need to use a newer atapi.sys. You can find it on the Microsuft site after searching for hours, since they care so much for their customers. You can also copy it from the service packs (bug-fix packs). AFter the files are copied to your disk you can copy the new file in with them. You are now thinking: does he hate microsoft? I do not hate the products that work good. I do hate windows 98 because it is simply to instable. This has caused me to start with bootloaders in the first place. I also think monopolies are not good for the consumer. Besides that, good products are good products and everyone should use what they want.

Intermezzo - Installing DOS-

1. Boot into the first partition: you should see a C:/sc directory. Reboot.
2. Insert a dos diskette and install dos. Reboot
3. You now see a DOS choice when you boot up. check if it works. Then reboot in the first partition with windows.
4. Go to C:\sc. You can see that there is a new folder called MSDOSxxx. Now you want to make the files so that you can use a cd-rom player in dos, to install NT and Netware.
5. To do so my autoexec.bat says:

@if exist c:\checkmbr.exe c:\checkmbr quiet (Validate MBR, not a TSR)
C:\DOS\MSCDEX.EXE /d:IDECD000
C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X
@ECHO OFF
PROMPT $p$g
PATH C:\DOS
SET TEMP=C:\DOS
MODE CON CODEPAGE PREPARE=((850) C:\DOS\EGA.CPI)
MODE CON CODEPAGE SELECT=850

The config.sys says:

DEVICE=c:\CDROM\AOATAPI.SYS /d:IDECD000
DEVICE=C:\DOS\SETVER.EXE
DEVICE=C:\DOS\HIMEM.SYS
DOS=HIGH
COUNTRY=031,850,C:\DOS\COUNTRY.SYS
DEVICE=C:\DOS\DISPLAY.SYS CON=(EGA,,1)
FILES=30

Of course this means that you have a cd-driver that is called aoatapi.sys. You must adjust it to your drivers.
The point is that it is a good idea to have a cd working in your dos stuff. If you do not have dos you can probably also use your windows 98 rescue disk, boot it up, do "sys:c\" and reboot. But I have not tried it. You must copy the autoexec.bat and so on also to get a working cd player.

The trick is that you can use the DOS system for a basis to install windows NT and Netware 4 or 5. Make sure you copy and back up the dos-directory for if you screw up somewhere.

Continuing: - Tricks for windows nt

If you install NT and plan to leave unpartitioned space for other operating systems, you should manually create the NT partition, using whatever partitioning software you have available. (i.e. FDISK or Partition-It). Then, during the setup of Windows NT, Setup will format the partition what whichever file system you select. If you allow the Windows NT Setup program to create the logical partition, it will use the rest of the disk for an extended partition, and then create a logical partition of the size that you specify. You will not be able to create additional primary partitions for additional operating systems.

So far the NT installation. Once the installation is finished you will find the files in C:\sc\win_nt have changed. It now contains a boot.ini; and so does the C:\ directory. You could adjust this file and copy your NT system to another partition, thereby creating more NT systems. I have not tried it, but why not? I do not know if you can then just boot NT from a fat partition, but try and find out. The boot.ini looks like this:

[boot loader]
timeout=30
default=scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINNT
[operating systems]
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00"
scsi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(5)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00 [VGA mode]" /basevideo /sos
C:\="MS-DOS"

It sure looks you can manually add whatever you want. By the way, partition 5 is the fifth partition without counting the extended partition as 4, as linux lilo does.

If you install nt on the second disk the boot.ini looks like this: [boot loader]
timeout=30
default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINNT
[operating systems]
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00"
multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(1)partition(2)\WINNT="Windows NT Server Version 4.00 [VGA mode]" /basevideo /sos
C:\ = "MS-DOS"

pretty clear huh?

With SC2000 you can now also resize nt partitions and copy them. After that you need to adjust the boot.ini to start them up of course.

Tricks for Novell Netware 4 /5

If you have red the windows NT bits above you can guess how you can install Novell netware. First install dos and make a duplicate as shown above. Make sure you adjust the config.sys and delete the line
C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X

That line will destroy your setup process, because Netware needs to own the system. Boot from your adjusted dos-copy , put in the netware cd-rom and setup! That is it. Beware that netware makes a C:\netware directory, so please do not just duplicate netware files (this is difficult anyway since only norton ghost for netware can duplicate such a partition smartly.

So far netware. There is nothing to it! By the way at www.novell.com you can get a netware trial disk for less then nothing (ok not true) which you can use for 3 users. With system commander you can thus try it out on your regular computer.

Tricks for linux

If you just want to install linux once go for the automatic install. If you know your linux a bit though make sure you have a /boot partition in the beginning of the disk, so lilo will give no problems. For those that have not heard: lilo cannot boot your kernel when lilo or the kernel are above a certain cilinder, in effect about 2 gig. Some linuxes will warn you (mandrake 7 will) but most won't.

There are not really many tricks for linux. If you use linux for some time you will apreciate the resizing function of sc2000. However, youre computer must be booted to do so while there are programs that can expand partitions in linux while the computer runs. Some tips and tricks are:

If you install linux, you must remember that lilo but also the /etc/fstab file (that configures what partitions will be mounted automatically) rely on information on partitions. If you delete partitions, your linux can have problems if this information is not accurate anymore. For instance if you have two primairy fat partitions, and install linux in the third primairy partition, fstab and lilo.conf will say that the root partition is hda3. But if you now delete the second fat and re-size the first, linux will no longer boot up. This is also true if fstab reports that there is a swap partition, but linux cannot find it. It will try to find a partition and issue a kernel panic: i.e. it will not work. You must then change the liloconf and fstab from windows (with linuxext) or with a resque diskette (you could use the lrp disks I describe on these pages as well).
You can avoid all that by making the root system (/) the first partition in an extended partition, which will make it hda5 (or hdb5 all on ide drives) or the first partition of the second disk (hdb1). The extended partition is always hda4 (or hdb4) and the first logical hda5, no matter how many primairy partitions there are.
However, if you ever plan to install another linux (and you will because linux is improving by the month at the moment) you can best make a first /boot partition of about 50 to 100 mb. In this partition your kernel will be held and lilo will be installed in its boot record, or in the master boot record. When you later install more linuxes, you can add them to the lilo.conf file you are using (be carefull to pick the right one) and copy the new kernel to the /boot partition. Then your root partition can be anywhere you like, but the first partition in the extended partition is good. The first on the second drive also, or make /boot the first and / (root) the second. Or perhaps first /boot, then swap and then root if you use the disk for linux only. Because linux will revolt if swap is referred to in fstab but wrongly. If you install many linuxes it is convenient to have swap in the same place and chare it.

Always have a fat or fat32 partition as the last partition in the extended space. Else windows will report errors and hide partitions. Norton utils will then ask to format the "wrong" partition and if your little brother says ok while you are away your system is trashed. This is a dos bug by the way.

You might want to take parts of your linux system to other partitions. For instance the /users for convenient back-up. Or the /var to avoid that your partition fills up, the www-files because you can then mount them read-only (more safe). You might want everything non-root out of the /root partition becuae for securities sake you want the system to boot with /root read-only.
You can do all this pretty easily.

First make a new ext2 partition and format it.
Boot in linux and mount the partition (make a directory for instance /mnt/var) mount the partition by doing mount "/dev/hda6 /mnt/var". You can later unmount it by doing "umount /mnt/var".
Now you must copy the /var directory to the new partition. You can try this, but be carefull, since I am not entirely sure it will work with all distributions. Go to the concole ande cd to the /var directory. do "find * -print | cpio -padmuv /mnt/var" To understand what is going on you must read man find and man cpio. That should copy all that is in /var to the mounted partition.
Now check if all seems ok by peeking into the newly filled partition.
Now automate this by adding the mounting to the /etc/fstab file. :
/dev/hda6 /mnt/var ext2 defaults 0 0 (I am not entirely sure about the 0 0 part but my fstab shows it. You should have a look at man mount. To mount read only do /dev/hda6 /mnt/var ext2 ro 0 0 .
Reboot and see if this goes well.
If all is well make a link in /var pointing to /mnt/var. You can do that with kde but also I think with "link /var /mnt/var". Try it.
If this works boot again and see if all functions well. If it does make a backup of the /var directory, you can use the coammnds I showed above. The delete everything in the /var directory except for the link.
Check if that works after a boot.
If all is well, delete the backup stuff and you can resize the / root directory if needed. Finished!

Windows 2000?