installation question

[G.]

On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 11:58 AM, Tony Pursell
<ajp at princeswalk.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri, 2010-09-03 at 12:37 -0400, J wrote:
>> On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 10:45, Tony Pursell <ajp at princeswalk.fsnet.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> > Looks like HP is using all four avaialable partitions for Win 7.  Was
>> > Win 7 pre-installed.  Did you create any new partitions in Win7?  You
>> > need a free partition that Ubuntu can use as an extended partition to
>> > put all its file systems in. That is why you don't have the option to
>> > dual boot.
>>
>> This is my thought as well... but let me expound just a bit, because I
>> have found that this is something that not my students never seem to
>> understand (I still don't completely, either)...
>>
>> When partitioning a hard disk, you can have up to 15 partitions,
>> HOWEVER you can have only 4 PRIMARY partitions. To get those extra
>> partitions, you need an extended partition that contains several
>> logical partitions within it... So, using things to the maximum, your
>> hard disk arrangement would look something like this:
>>
>> Drive
>>     \ Primary Partiton 1
>>     \ Primary Partition 2
>>     \ Primary Partition 3
>>     \ Extended Partition
>>         \ Logical Partition 1
>>         \ Logical Partiton 2
>>         \ ...
>>         \ Logical Partition 11 (it may be 12)
>>
>> Since you seem to indicate you have the following:
>>
>> Drive
>>     \ Primary 1
>>     \ Primary 2
>>     \ Primary 3
>>     \ Primary 4
>>
>> You may be stuck...
>>
>> As this is a laptop, adding another drive is not a reasonable possibility...
>>
>> One solution could be to remove one of those partitions, at which
>> point the installer would allow you to resize the rest and do the side
>> by side install.
>> But you need to BE SURE of what is contained in those partitions...
>>
>> >From what you've said so far, it appears you've got C: as the Windows
>> 7 drive, D: is probably the restore partition, and E: contains a bunch
>> of HP tools.
>>
>> Personally, I'd dump the HP Tools partition, but that's just me.
>>
>> But not being familiar with how HP sets up their restore stuff... I
>> dunno... at the very least, your only options at this point are A:
>> remove one of those partitions, which frees up partition entries to
>> allow for an extended and logical setup as shown above, or B: use Wubi
>> and install inside windows itself... thought there's a bit of pain
>> there of a different sort :)
>>
>
> Thanks for that - I know the basics but not the details.
>
> Tony
>
>
>
>
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i had pretty much come to the same conclusion.  i am now making
Recovery disks.  I made copies of the the HP recovery files.  Then i
will use that partition for ubuntu.  If this were my computer i would
erase 7, install Lucid, and run 7 inside, as i do on my own computer.

Thanks for the replies!!!!  Any other thoughts are appreciated.

gary