Problems with repartitioning a HP Pavilion Laptop

[Bill Stanley]

Hi,

I have installed Linux on many computers but this is the first time I 
had any problems.  The computer is a new HP Pavilion Model dV6 laptop, I 
assume the HD is ATA Hitachi HTS54505.  I used the Windows partitioning 
utility to resize the Windows partition so I would have some unused 
space (100 GB) where I could install Linux.  This went smoothly and 
Windows ran smoothly with the reduced partition size.  I used Windows 
about a month without any problems.

Yesterday, I had some free time so I decided to install Xubuntu (12.04 - 
64 bit) and all seemed to go smoothly.  The steps I followed were...

I chose "something else" when prompted for the install type.
I then set up the new partition table as


sda1 -      1 MB - unknown  (I did nothing here)
sda2 -    208 MB - ntfs     (I did nothing here)
sda3 - 400000 MB - ntfs     (The resized Windows partition
                              I did nothing here)
The free space was 100000 MB.  I partitioned the free space as follows.

(sda4 -  No sda4 ???)
sda5 -   7998 MB -logical partition - swap area
sda6 -  49999 MB -logical partition - Ext4  - mount as /
sda7 -  42003 MB -logical partition - Ext4  - mount as /home
boot loader (GRUB) at dev/sda


I then clicked on "Install now".
I got the location map and then a pop window saying that an error 
occurred.  It says...


"             ERROR!
Error informing the kernel about modifications to partition 4 - Device 
or resource busy.  This means Linux won't know about any changes made to 
/dev/sda4 until you reboot - so you shouldn't use it before rebooting"


I thought this was insignificant since sda4 wasn't listed in the 
proposed partition scheme.  I chose "ignore".

Then I got the same message about sda5, sda6, and sda7.  I knew 
something was amiss so I aborted the installation.

The problem is that now I can't even boot into Windows because the 
installation attempted to install GRUB.  I was able to save any user 
data to a flash drive before trying the failed install.
I thought that this might be a Ubuntu only problem so I tried installing 
Mint.  Same problem.  The vexing thing was that I didn't get much of a 
clue to what was happening. Since Ubuntu and Mint are Debian based, I 
tried a different flavor of Linux - Open Suse.  This time I did get an 
error message before partitioning even started.  It said that the 
partition scheme on the HD and the partitioning tool, parted, were 
incompatible.  (It might be nice if Ubuntu checked for partitioning 
problems before trying to repartition.) The error message that Open Suse 
gave was as follows...


"The partitioning on disk dev/sda is not readable by the partitioning 
tool parted which is used to change the partition table.

You can use the partitions on dev/sda as they are.  ..."


I did all the BIOS diagnostics and no hardware problems were detected. 
That is the history of what has been done.  The laptop is unusable since 
I can't boot into Windows, luckily I had the foresight to get a Windows 
installation disks from HP.  The Windows installation disk says that a 
repair can't be done and I must do a full reinstall.  What can be done 
now?  I assume that I should try to install Linux first and then 
Windows.  Does anybody know about any new partitioning scheme that MS 
has come up with that would mess up Linux?  I assume that if I reinstall 
Windows as is, I will run into the same mess when I try to install Linux.

Sorry for the long message but I thought it wise to give as much 
information as possible to answer any questions you might have.

Bill Stanley