Problems with repartitioning a HP Pavilion Laptop

[Jose I Diaz Bardales]

On 08/17/2012 04:18 PM, Bill Stanley wrote:
> On 08/17/2012 04:10 PM, Liam Proven wrote:
>> On 17 August 2012 21:07, Bill Stanley<bstanle at wowway.com>  wrote:
>>>> The PC MBR partitioning system only allows 4 primary partitions per
>>>> drive&   you already had 3.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> If the drive was partitioned with MBR, then you need to create an
>>>> extended partition as sda4 and then create the Linux partitions as
>>>> logical ones inside the extended partition.
>>>>
>>>> The alternative to MBR on some modern machines is GUID.
>>>>
>>>> If you boot off a LiveCD and run GParted, it should tell you.
>>>>
>>>> I tend to recommend creating the partitions in advance with GParted
>>>> anyway - it offers more control&   a better UI than the install
>>>> program.
>>>
>>>
>>> I used a USB flash drive to boot into Xubuntu and was able to run
>>> GParted.
>>> I looked around the GUI and didn't find the information on if it is
>>> GUID.
>>> Can you tell me where to find it?
>>>
>>> I did find under VIEW/device information this info...
>>>
>>> Model  - ATA Hitachi HTS54505
>>> Size   - 465.76 GB
>>> Path   - /dev/sda
>>>
>>> Partition Table - msdos
>>> etc ...
>>>
>>> The other information is very good as well it is (some columns were
>>> omitted)...
>>>
>>> Partition -                - File system - Label     - Flags
>>> /dev/sda1 - (exclamation mark) - ntfs     -  SYSTEM    - ...
>>> /dev/sda2 - (exclamation mark) - ntfs     -  ...       - boot
>>> /dev/sda3 - (  ...           ) - ntfs     - New Volume - ...
>>> /dev/sda4 - (  ...           ) - extended - Recovery   - ...
>>> /dev/sda5 - (  ...           ) - fat32    - HP Tools   - ...
>>> /dev/sda6 - (exclamation mark) - unknown
>>> /dev/sda7 - (exclamation mark) - unknown
>>> unallocated - ( ...          ) - unallacated
>>>
>>> It is obvious that the partition table is messed up by all the
>>> attempts at
>>> installing Linux and then trying to recover the windows partition. As I
>>> remember it, there were only sda1, sda2 and sda3 on the first
>>> attempt.  What
>>> should I do next?  If I can make assumptions about sda1 and sda2 (the
>>> exclamation mark), there is something wrong here and presumably it
>>> would be
>>> better not to try to recover Windows, luckily, I have my user data.
>>> Should I
>>> install Windows or Linux first?  I know that a Windows reinstall will
>>> overwrite the GRUB boot loader.  But If I go with Windows first, I
>>> might not
>>> get the option of leaving unallocated space for Linux.
> 
> Bill Stanley
> 

Mr Bill, If I were you, I would reinstall Windows with the
Windows-Installation-CD from HP then I would install Xubuntu, you can
delete your old partition while installing Xubuntu or thru
Gparted(LiveCD) as metioned previously by Liam.

Note: The small partition that you mention is probably where the windows
installation file are stored so that you can recover your Windows OS
(see the BIOS message when you computer start) or you might be able to
create a Windows-Cd-Recobery (which you already have from HP).

HTH