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jonnat
June 30th, 2011, 02:51 AM
Hello,

I've been dual booting Ubuntu and winxp for a few years and the Ubuntu installation in my machines has always been a matter of a few clicks, with Ubuntu recognizing my current xp installation and offering to repartition my disk to have both OSs coexist.

I recently bought a new laptop (HP dv6t, win7 x64) and while trying to install Ubuntu 11.04, the installer informed me that I would have to get rid of win7 to install the new OS.

What happened to the friendly installer? Is there still an easy way to set up a dual boot in a system in which win7 is already present and an installation cd for it is not available?

Thanks for the help.
J

TechSupportx86
June 30th, 2011, 03:32 AM
I would open the computer manager (start> right click computer> manage> disk management) and shrink the partition (to whatever you need for ubuntu, say 20GB), then run the CD and install to the newly created partition (the one you made by shrinking).

I did the same on my PC (Win7 64, 11.04 64) and it works very well.

dFlyer
June 30th, 2011, 03:36 AM
A hard drive can only have 4 primary partitoins. Changes are they are already in use. If so you will have to re-arrange your hard drive to free up a partition for linux.

nzjethro
June 30th, 2011, 04:06 AM
I would say it would be a maximum partition error, as dFlyer said. Most new HP laptops these days come with 100MB boot partition, the actual partition, a "recovery partition" and a "HP tools" partition. As you can have a maximum of 4 primary partitions, the installer won't allow you to install Ubuntu alongside Windows.

You may have to delet one of your partitions, to create room for another primary partition (or more likely an extended partition). To do this, you should clone one of your partitions ("HP tools" will be the safest to play around with), and and move it to an external drive. You will then need to delete your "HP tools" partition on you main HDD (so that you have only 3 primary partitions), then create a partition for Ubuntu in that space (you can allow the installer to do this automatically if you wish). If you feel like being a bit more proactive and manually partitioning to your liking, I would suggest reading this guide. (http://lifehacker.com/5403100/dual+boot-windows-7-and-ubuntu-in-perfect-harmony)

This process (freeing up a primary partition) can be relatively challenging, but if you do need to do it (and I'll happily be proven wrong by someone with a bit more Ubuntu experience than me), there is a lot of support for that kind of thing here. :D

jonnat
June 30th, 2011, 04:11 AM
Thanks for the info dFlyer, I did not know of this limitation. It seems that I indeed have 4 partitions, given that win7 has a recovery partition and HP has two, for tools and recovery.

TechSupportx86, I will try your method, thanks a lot. Do you know how many partitions your system had to begin with?

Thanks,
J

TechSupportx86
June 30th, 2011, 06:03 AM
Well windows 7 by it's self uses 2 partitions:

Windows 7
Windows 7 System Reserve

I did have windows 7 + reserve + recovery. I didn't have an HP tools partition, but from factory it had 3 main partitions so i had to resize one of them.

I would go with nzjethro (http://ubuntuforums.org/member.php?u=1306925) and delete the tools partition, even the recovery partition can go if you got a set of discs with your PC (or create a set of discs, then delete).

Windows 7 = Need it
Windows 7 reserve = Need it (but i don't know why... bootloader maybe?)
HP Recovery = It's only an image of the OS in case you need to reinstall, not necessary if you have a set of discs
HP Tools = Most likely full of useless utilities that you may use once throughout the entire life of the laptop.

I would make a set of recovery discs (HP software lets you create 1 set), delete the recovery partition, and the tools partition. resize the main partition, and create a new partition with the empty space.

YesWeCan
June 30th, 2011, 11:47 AM
I suggest:
1. Use Windows to do any shrinking and to create one free, primary partition for all Ubuntu stuff.
2. Using the Ubuntu installer (yes, it is difficult to use) first make the free partition an extended partition. Then add logical partitions for / and swap and any others. Where they are placed is of little importance.
3. If practical, it is best to install the boot code to a different disk than the Windows disk since it breaks the MBR.

jonnat
June 30th, 2011, 09:17 PM
Thank you all for the replies and suggestions. I'll try the repartitioning and post the results.

But I'm rather annoyed about having to jump through some artificial hoops because of the way win7 gorges partitions.

Thus, I have a follow up question (please do let me know if it would be best as a new thread):
I spend most of my time in Ubuntu, and load windows only for the rare occasion in which I need an application that is win only. The best solution I can think of is to completely format my HD, install Ubuntu in it and use VirtulBox to virtulize win7.

Are there drawbacks from this approach? Has anyone tried it?

One issue is that my win7 copy is OEM and I don't have an installation disk. Does anyone know if I could get a win7 installation cd from someone else (BT?) and use my license to activate it?

Thank you again.
J

nzjethro
June 30th, 2011, 10:12 PM
But I'm rather annoyed about having to jump through some artificial hoops because of the way win7 gorges partitions.
...
Are there drawbacks from this approach? Has anyone tried it?
...
Does anyone know if I could get a win7 installation cd from someone else (BT?) and use my license to activate it?


1) It's pretty poor practice, and very annoying if you want to play around with OSes. I can only imagine that there is some kind of deal between MS and PC manufacturers, to create laptops default with 4 primary partitions, so that moving away from Windows is made more difficult.

2) I've tried running Ubuntu in a VM on Windows, but never the other way around. It was laggy for me, but my hardware is far from top of the line. What specs are you dealing with? Look around on these fora - there'll probably be at least one person with the same hardware as you who has had experience VMing.

3) I'm fairly sure that even if you have a legitimate, legal product key it is illegal to download Windows from bittorrent. I mean, technically it would work, but legally it is on the dark side of the grey area. :p I borrowed an install disk from a friend when I reinstalled Windows, so if you know anyone with a copy you could try them. At a worst case scenario, you should be able to contact your PC manufacturer to obtain a copy of your install disks. This is kind of a stretch though.

YesWeCan
June 30th, 2011, 10:26 PM
But I'm rather annoyed about having to jump through some artificial hoops because of the way win7 gorges partitions.
Windows 7 only uses 2 (at most). It is your HP stuff that is consuming the other 2. HP certainly don't want to make it easy for linux users, in a number of ways.


The best solution I can think of is to completely format my HD, install Ubuntu in it and use VirtulBox to virtulize win7.

Are there drawbacks from this approach? Has anyone tried it?
It is common practice to run Windows as a VB guest OS. For comfort you need at least 2GB of RAM. Some I/O is not perfect - like USB mobile phone sync'ing, and the graphics are slower so YouTube videos may be a little jerky at times. Depends on your uP speed and RAM. But for most stuff it is really good and has the advantage of "snapshots". I use Windows 7 in VB all the time.

jonnat
July 8th, 2011, 01:43 AM
As an update and concluding remarks, Thanks to the helpful replies I was able to install Ubuntu 11.04 with win7 using the default Ubuntu installer options.

The issue was indeed that the laptop (HP dv6t) came already with 4 primary partitions. I used the Ubuntu live CD to access the smaller of these partitions, named HP_TOOLS, and copied all its contents to an external drive and deleted this partition. (As an aside, it really does seem that HP went to great lengths to occupy all partitions and make an alternative OS installation more cumbersome, given that this one had a mere 9 MB of data).

With the partition deleted, the Ubuntu installer offered the option of an installation with win7, as before. The installer did all the work by itself, including shrinking the win7 partition and creating the new one. Grub 2 was installed as the new boot manager and I'm able to boot both OS's without issues.

Thank you all for the help.
J