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View Full Version : [SOLVED] 11.04: No "algonside windows" option?



leandromartinez98
June 15th, 2011, 06:44 PM
My brother is trying to install 11.04 in his new eeepc netbook. The partitioning of this netbook is strange, and it comes with four
partitions, sda1 (169gb), sda2(128gb), sda3(19gb), sda4(30mb).

He wants to install Ubuntu alongside Windows, and we had never any issue doing that. This time, however, there was no "alongside" option in the installer, only "install inside windows", "erase windows" and "advanced" options. Apparently this results from this four partition arrangement, I'm not sure. The "inside" option simply didn't work, it went into windows and did nothing.

I will be meeting him and then installing Ubuntu for him there, because I more or less know about partitioning, but I would like to know more technically why there is no "alongside" option in this case.

I think the 169gb partition has the windows installation and the 128gb partition is empty. The third is a recovery partition and the fourth I don't know.

Anyone know why there is no "alongside" option in the installer here?

Is the better choice to manage the partitions within windows and then proceed to Ubuntu installation in some way that the "alongside" option appear, or work on the partitions directly from the Ubuntu installer? Any advice is appreciated.

Quackers
June 15th, 2011, 07:27 PM
As you already have 4 primary partitions you must delete one of them before Ubuntu can be installed to its own partition.
You will have to decide which one to delete. Do not delete any small boot partition, if there is one.
You also do not say which version of Windows is installed.
If you delete a partition which does not in itself give enough space for Ubuntu to install into you will need to shrink one of the other partitions. This can be done using Windows Disk Management utility.
Once there is free space for Ubuntu to install into you should get the option to "install alongside" Windows.

leandromartinez98
June 15th, 2011, 07:30 PM
Ok, nice, so I will delete the second one (129gb, empty). It is Windows7 which is installed. Thanks for the feedback, I was just wandering why couldn't I create another partition, but it seems that the four primary partition limit is indeed the problem, I didn't know it existed.

Quackers
June 15th, 2011, 07:40 PM
It is very important that you don't try to create more than 4 primary partitions.
3 primary partitions and an extended partition is ok. Then, in the extended partition you can create as many logical (NOT primary) partitions as you want.
If the 129GB partition is empty then that would be a good choice to delete.

If Windows 7 was pre-installed on the pc it is likely that there will also be a small 100MB to 200MB boot partition as well. This was not mentioned in your previous post, but it is likely that there is one (unless Windows 7 was installed from an installation disc).
This small partition must not be deleted! Windows will not boot if it is deleted!

Remember 4 primary partitions is the maximum allowed! 3 primarys and an extended partition is normally the way to get more partitions.

leandromartinez98
June 18th, 2011, 03:50 PM
Hi, thanks for the advice. I deleted the empty partition within windows (and also shrink the windows one, as it will be almost without utility), and then the 'alognside windows' option appears. Actually it was a little bit scarying when it started to format partitions without showing a picture of the hard disk and where the formatting was been done, but it did what it was supposed to do.

Thanks!

Quackers
June 18th, 2011, 04:26 PM
You're welcome :-)
I'm glad to hear you got things running :-)
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