I want to dual boot

[Kaninepete]

I tried to install Jaunty on my new laptop because I still had the live CD laying around after my desktop died. I want to dual boot with windows 7, which came preloaded on my HP pavillion.
The installation process on the live CD only gave me the option to overwrite all of the windows stuff, and have only ubuntu. Do I need to make room for the new partion first? I don't remember doing that before.

Also, on the live CD, I didn't have sound. Will I be able to fix that easily?

[oldfred]

How many partitions has the system used? They often have a hidden recovery or two and may have used all 4 primary partitions.

It is much better to use win7 tools to shrink the windows partition and reboot several times into windows to make sure it works ok after the resize. Many blame grub/ubuntu for windows issues with a resize.

from liveCd this will tell number of partitions:
sudo fdisk -l (el not 1 or I)

[Kaninepete]

I can see from the windows partition editor thing that it has four.

SYSTEM 199MB
(C: ) 450.13GB
RECOVERY(D: ) 15.33GB
HP_TOOLS 103MB

None of them strike me as being useless. I don't know what HP_TOOLS actually does, but I'm afraid to delete it.
What do you suggest?

[oldfred]

You cannot delete system or C: without having to totally reinstall windows. That leaves recovery. What does your recovery have? It often is a way to write a repair CD and possibly to reimage your hard drive to the way it was the day you purchased it. If it lets you write that to a DVD I would do that and write the repair CD. (you should have done this as this is the only way to recover from a hard drive failure). If it only works from the partition and you do not want to delete it, you have to add another drive.

[OrangeCrate]

http://ubuntuguide.org/wiki/Ubuntu:Jaunty#Dual-Booting_Windows_and_Ubuntu

[Goldcoin]

Use Window's disk software (that is already built in) to partition the disk, leaving at least 10GB for Ubuntu.

[Kaninepete]

I made the recovery DVDs.
I would rather not delete the recovery partition because I don't know if it is equivalent to them or not.

Can I just shrink windows as goldcoin says, or is there a problem with having more than 4 partitions?
I'm hardly using any of my 500GB, so that would be my prefered method.

[kansasnoob]

I would boot the Ubuntu Live CD choosing to try without changes and then run the command from terminal:


sudo fdisk -l

BTW that's a lower case L.

If you have only one drive it's probably sda so run:


sudo parted /dev/sda print

EXAMPLE:


lance@lance-desktop:~$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for lance:

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xdbc9dbc9

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2677 21502971 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 3764 19457 126062055 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 2678 3763 8723295 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 3764 4799 8321638+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 4800 9284 36025731 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 9285 10301 8169021 83 Linux
/dev/sda8 10302 12215 15374173+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 14880 15032 1228941 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda10 15033 17103 16635276 83 Linux
/dev/sda11 17104 17870 6160896 83 Linux
/dev/sda12 17871 19457 12747546 83 Linux
/dev/sda13 12216 13046 6674976 83 Linux
/dev/sda14 13047 14879 14723541 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order
lance@lance-desktop:~$ sudo parted /dev/sda print
Model: ATA WDC WD1600AAJB-0 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 160GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 22.0GB 22.0GB primary ntfs boot
3 22.0GB 31.0GB 8933MB primary ext3
2 31.0GB 160GB 129GB extended
5 31.0GB 39.5GB 8521MB logical ext3
6 39.5GB 76.4GB 36.9GB logical ext3
7 76.4GB 84.7GB 8365MB logical ext3
8 84.7GB 100GB 15.7GB logical ext3
13 100GB 107GB 6835MB logical ext3
14 107GB 122GB 15.1GB logical ext3
9 122GB 124GB 1258MB logical linux-swap(v1)
10 124GB 141GB 17.0GB logical ext3
11 141GB 147GB 6309MB logical ext3
12 147GB 160GB 13.1GB logical ext3

lance@lance-desktop:~$


You can see that the latter command is very "human readable :P

If you have 4 primary partitions you'll need to copy and then delete some partition to an external source, then create an extended partition and copy it back as a logical partition, and then create the partitions for Ubuntu.

Do not move any Windows partition needed for booting Windows!