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T08E
January 28th, 2010, 08:08 PM
Hey, I am trying to install ubuntu 9.10 alongside windows on my laptop's harddrive. When I was going through the procedure it gave me the option of a guided partition of my harddrive... however there was an error. At this stage I unplugged my external harddrive because it's sometimess a bit dodgy and restarted the installation process. However everytime since that I have tried to install, it only gives me the option of erasing the entire disk or specifying the partitions manually, which I have no idea to do. Any help would be appreciated.

darkod
January 28th, 2010, 08:22 PM
If you are only getting those options, most likely you already have 4 partitions on your hdd, and that's the maximum. To confirm this, boot the live desktop and in terminal execute:
sudo fdisk -l

Copy the result here.

T08E
January 28th, 2010, 10:14 PM
sudo
Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x6f61df32

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 702 5632000 27 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2 * 702 9729 72515168+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

darkod
January 28th, 2010, 10:37 PM
Well, you have only two partitions which is good, but the first one is unknown system which doesn't sound good. If it can't get properly recognized maybe that's the reason ubuntu is not offering some of the install options.
Also, when you got the error the first time, did it happen after the actual install started, or during the 7 screen you were going through? If the actual installation was interrupted, who knows in what state it left the hdd.

T08E
January 28th, 2010, 11:03 PM
Well it was still on the options screens, I just clicked quit when it didn't have the guided option so it shouldn't have started installing.

darkod
January 28th, 2010, 11:18 PM
No, it shouldn't. How about booting windows and trying some disk checks on that first partition / or the whole disk? Maybe that will sort out some errors.

T08E
January 29th, 2010, 05:33 PM
Yep, that sorted it... Ubuntu is installed now and all seems to be running swimmingly, thank you very much for your help!