Overlapping Partitions

[dimbohall]

Hi,

I stupidly inserted the windows CD into my dual boot Ubuntu 11.10 / windows xp system. I just wanted to see if I could install windows on my external usb HD, but didn't actually go ahead with the install.

It seems like the windows CD messed up my MBR and I had to use boot-repair and the ubuntu 11.10 live CD to gain access to ubuntu again.

It seems to boot up a little differently (slower) but works. However, I now cant see any of my partitions in nautilus (there are 3) although I can mount them manually.

When I open gparted, it just shows my whole hard drive as unallocated (I know it has a windows partition that works and my ubuntu partition that I am using now). It gives an error 'cannot have overlapping partitions'.

Nothing will automount anymore, not even USB drives.

sudo fdisk -lu /dev/sda

gives


omitting empty partition (5)

Disk /dev/sda: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
240 heads, 63 sectors/track, 41345 cylinders, total 625142448 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x877b877b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 63842309 31921123+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 63844350 133484084 34819867+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 127636488 133484084 2923798+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4 133484085 625137344 245826630 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 63844352 123445247 29800448 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 123447296 127635455 2094080 82 Linux swap / Solaris

which shows they are overlapping.

How can I fix this?

Thanks,

D.

[coffeecat]

The overlapping partitions error message (and Gparted showing all unallocated space) is because the Windows XP installer has got up to its old trick of trying to convert a Linux logical partition into a primary one - which is impossible. If you look at your fdisk output you'll see that the swap partition (sda3) is inside your extended partition, sda2. Which is where it is meant to be if it is a logical one. It was a logical partition, and was probably originally numbered sda7, but the Windows installer thought it knew better and renumbered it to #3, which is primary by definition. You now have an illegality in the partition table, and various utilities are complaining as a result.

Easily fixed. Have a look here:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/fixparts/

Fixparts *should* detect and fix the problem without much input from you, but what it needs to do is to rewrite the partition table so that sda3 becomes a logical partition once again.

By the way, the output of fdisk is near unreadable at the moment. It needs to be in code tags and I'll do that for you.

EDIT: I don't know what the "omitting empty partition (5)" message is all about. Perhaps more confusion caused by the partition table illegality.

[dimbohall]

The overlapping partitions error message (and Gparted showing all unallocated space) is because the Windows XP installer has got up to its old trick of trying to convert a Linux logical partition into a primary one - which is impossible. If you look at your fdisk output you'll see that the swap partition (sda3) is inside your extended partition, sda2. Which is where it is meant to be if it is a logical one. It was a logical partition, and was probably originally numbered sda7, but the Windows installer thought it knew better and renumbered it to #3, which is primary by definition. You now have an illegality in the partition table, and various utilities are complaining as a result.

Easily fixed. Have a look here:

http://www.rodsbooks.com/fixparts/

Fixparts *should* detect and fix the problem without much input from you, but what it needs to do is to rewrite the partition table so that sda3 becomes a logical partition once again.

By the way, the output of fdisk is near unreadable at the moment. It needs to be in code tags and I'll do that for you.

EDIT: I don't know what the "omitting empty partition (5)" message is all about. Perhaps more confusion caused by the partition table illegality.

Hi,

Thanks. That worked perfectly. It did knock out grub which was easily repaired using the live disk and boot-repair.

Chao.

D.

[coffeecat]

It did knock out grub which was easily repaired using the live disk and boot-repair.

Curious. I wouldn't have thought it would touch the parts of the HD where grub is written. Whatever, I'm gad you got it fixed.