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View Full Version : [ubuntu] How to recover from bad, but working installation of 12.04



cigtoxdoc
July 8th, 2013, 03:24 AM
I am in the process of converting my office from Win XP Pro SP3 to Ubuntu 12.04, but setting each machine for dual either by patitioning a single HD (or SSD) or using two HD. Everything went well until I tackled my DELL Vostro 3500 laptop (has Crucial SSD). After making copies of critical files, and an image of the Win XP partition, I used Gparted to set remaining 20 GB on the SSD to ext4. I then tried to use the LIve CD for 12.04 64-bit since Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU M 520 @ 2.40GHz is reportedly 64-bit. Neither of my CD-ROMS for 64-bit 12.04 would load far enough to do a live session (no error messages, just Ubuntu and dots). So I tried the 32-bit version. Based on prior installations, I expected Ubuntu to see the 20 GB of ext4 and make a good installation. That did not work as the install program wanted to chop the 20 GB into at least two sections (and sometimes more on installation I overwrote). Please see gparted screenshot attached.

Since I have not done much to this installation except call up the WiFi and nVidia proprietary drivers, I can go back and do a reintallation overwriting the current Ubunto installation. How do I get the reinstation to give me one 20GB contiguous space? I don't need a swap file as 4 GB RAM is more than enough to do most everything.

Long-term objective is to move files gradually from Win partition to Ubuntu partitiion, gradually decreasing size of Win and increasing size of Ubuntu.

Thank you,

John

leosubhadeep
July 8th, 2013, 07:15 AM
Did you define a swap partition and tried?

If you can, try re-installing Ubuntu from the bootable usb drive (not mandatory, though!). It is recommended to have a dedicated swap partition and (optionally) a dedicated "usr" partition, to be mounted during installation process. If you are re-installing, forget gparted's deeds and follow Ubuntu installation media's way. While partitioning use "Try something else" from the installation wizard. A bit of help here: http://www.fosspedia.com/how-to-install-ubuntu-12-10-alongside-windows/

cigtoxdoc
July 9th, 2013, 10:56 PM
Thank you for your help. I followed your instructions and partitioned the "Ubuntu area" of the drive before reinstalling 12.04. Results are attached.

John