Dual boot install issue

[daveysprocketbrew]

I spent a good chunk of last night trying to install PCLinuxOS 2009.2 onto my wife's netbook as a dual boot with XP.  I kept getting stuck at the disk partitioning stage.  It says the partitioning failed because the "partition table is full".  I'm assuming this is because there is a factory partition on this machine for some reason as a C: and D: drive.  Is there a way around this?  I don't want to screw up Windows.

[sammy2fish]

Hi Davey...

If you haven't got Linux on yet, there is a tool in windows for this.

Control panel> Administrative tools> Disk management.  There you can click on a partition, and extend or shrink it.  This is also providing the partition isn't full.  I would think you'd need about 30-gigs for the PCLinuxOS install.

Added:  Oh by the way, welcome to the forums...

[daveysprocketbrew]

Was it that I didn't allow enough room, or would the new install create too many partitions?  That's the impression I got.  I was allowing for about 20g in the wizard.  Can I delete the Windows partition without losing the data, then make a new one for PCLinuxOS?

[sammy2fish]

If you have a second partition on the laptop from factory, on Win-XP, it is most likely made by the maker of the laptop.  Compaq and Ibm used to be famous for that.  But those "secondary" partitions are generally small, containing system or recovery files.

When you have booted with the live-cd, is it possible for you to capture the desktop... with Gimp maybe, and show us what PCLOS sees as partitioning options?  Save the capture as a my desktop.jpg, 1024 by whatever, (size limitations on forums).  Then under Additional Options, attach it to the post?

[bicol_willem]

Wow sammy2fish, I did never know this resizing trick in XP. I am aware of it in Vista though.

daveysprocketbrew, I would get a PMagic Live CD to have a good look at your partitions before anything else.
In case the same is very capable to manage the partitions as you will find out.

[sammy2fish]

Wow sammy2fish, I did never know this resizing trick in XP. I am aware of it in Vista though.

daveysprocketbrew, I would get a PMagic Live CD to have a good look at your partitions before anything else.
In case the same is very capable to manage the partitions as you will find out.

bicol_willem, you could well be right.  It's been a while since I've ran XP,  I dual-boot between Win-7 and PCLOS now.  I know win7 has this... I was assuming XP had it too.

PMagic Live CD will definitely do the job, providing one has a copy or is able to get one.


Added:  daveysprocketbrew, 20-gigs is a big enough size...

[daveysprocketbrew]

I don't have the computer with me right now, but I do remember it set up from the factory (Asus 1000HE) as a 82G C drive and a 62G D drive.  Not sure where the rest of my 160 G hard drive is.  I tried to partition the 82 G one to leave about 62 G for Windows.  By the way, the few times I have posted, I have found the people on this forum to be very nice, patient and extremely helpful.

[bicol_willem]

I don't have the computer with me right now, but I do remember it set up from the factory (Asus 1000HE) as a 82G C drive and a 62G D drive.  Not sure where the rest of my 160 G hard drive is.  I tried to partition the 82 G one to leave about 62 G for Windows.  By the way, the few times I have posted, I have found the people on this forum to be very nice, patient and extremely helpful.

Here you can download PMagic :  http://sourceforge.net/projects/partedmagic/files/

As for 82 + 62 = NOT 160  LOL!   I have seen often HDD's that should be 80 or what ever and all we find back is probably 76 "real" GB's.  There was even a time that I knew as to why!  (Can't recall now). Anyway don't expect to get the "full capacity" visible. In your case, you're missing 160 - 144 = 16 Gb and that would indicate some extra partition. In a "normal Linux setup" you would find some of that back as a swap partition. But as I said before: First have a good look at what you really got. To know is always better then guessing.

[Tomtompiper]

Drive manufactures use Decimal Megabyte of 1,000 Kilobytes whereas system uses Binary Megabyte of 1,024. hence small difference 2.2% If you have USB.2 and your machine will boot from USB then a 16 GB USB stick might be an option.

[Abraxas]

A little off track, but is so important to Defrag the Windows XP System Drive, to which you'll be installing Linux Partitions.

I suggest doing so about three times, if your Linux partitons write over some stray files of Windows System, could cause Windows not to work.

Good windows Defrag, I highly recommend MyDefrag v4.2.8 .

Let me get this right, daveysprocketbrew, can't figure your free space on this laptop ?


EASEUS Partition Master (Free) works great in XP, with some additional tools.

Goodluck.

[Was_Just19]

When running the PCLOS Live CD you might try the following command in a Terminal, which will report what PCLOS sees on your HDD .......  partitions and details etc etc

fdisk -l  <enter>    (that is minus elle not digit one)

Post back the output in your next post.

regards.