haze

Checkout http://www.systemrescuecd.org/ It includes Qtparted and partimage.Both are somewhat graphical.Might do what you want it to.Knoppix also comes with qtparted.I've used Qtparted a couple of times after diskdrake hosed my partition table.Works pretty well.

I have a presario 2195.I googled this laptop before installing mandrake,so I knew not to start pcmcia.I disabled this in the installation.If it still loads pcmcia,at lilo,arrow down to single.When you get to a prompt"chkconfig --del pcmcia"Then "shutdown -r now"It should reboot fine.On this laptop(most recent presarios,I think)pcmcia works fairly well with mandrake if you edit your /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file.In the section labeled :

# Resources we should not use, even if they appear to be available

cut and paste this

exclude irq 1

exclude irq 2

exclude irq 3

exclude irq 4

exclude irq 6

exclude irq 8

exclude irq 9

exclude irq 10

exclude irq 11

exclude irq 12

exclude irq 13

exclude irq 14

exclude irq 15

After this,you should be able to "service pcmcia start" without hanging your machine.To start on boot "chkconfig --add pcmcia"

My onboard wireless card is a Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g (rev 02)

Run "lspci" as root.If you have the same card,google for ndiswrapper.This driver uses your windows drivers under linux,and it comes with the 2.6.0 kernel,if you select it.After compiling,it ran fine on the stock 2.4-18mdk kernel.

Some of these laptops came with a HP wlan 802.11b.If you've got that one,google for wlan-ng.It will use the prism2_pci module.

I also use a smc2532w-b pcmcia card.This is a prism2 based card,necessary for running some "very interesting" applications.It uses the wlan-ng drivers.

I had to recompile my kernel to get acpi to work(2.6).If anyone is interested,I'll mail them my kernel config file.

Someone above mentioned that mandrake starts it's pcmcia service too late to use network cards.This is a laptop,I don't start my internet at boot anyway.Saves that annoying wait while booting if you are somewhere that you don't have access."ifup eth0 or eth1 or wlan0" works for me:-)

All in all,I've been pretty happy with this laptop.I spent alot of time googling,but that's one of the reasons I run linux.Next time I buy one,I'll have a knoppix or pclinuxos cd with me to boot before I buy.It would have saved me some work.

Have Fun